m 



. 



CRITICAL ESSAYS. 



By the same Author. 



The AUTUMN HOLIDAYS of a COUNTRY PARSON. 
Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d. 

The RECREATIONS of a COUNTRY PARSON. First Series. 
Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d. An Illustrated Edition, 12J. 6d. 

The RECREATIONS of a COUNTRY PARSON. Second Series. 
Crown 8vo. 3^. 6d. 

LEISURE HOURS in TOWN. 
Crown 8vo.. 3^. 6d. 

The COMMONPLACE PHILOSOPHER in TOWN and COUNTRY. 

Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d. 



The GRAVER THOUGHTS of a COUNTRY PARSON. First 
Series. Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d. 

COUNSEL and COMFORT SPOKEN from a CITY PULPIT. 
Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d. 

The GRAVER THOUGHTS of a COUNTRY PARSON. Second 
Series. Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d. 

SUNDAY AFTERNOONS at the PARISH CHURCH of a UNI- 
VERSITY CITY. Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d. 



THE CRITICAL ESSAYS OF 
A COUNTRY PARSON. 



BY THE AUTHOR OF 

THE RECREATIONS OF A COUNTRY PARSON 

I 

NEW EDITION. 



LONDON : 

LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 

1867. 



NV 



I 



LONDON 

PRINTED BY SPOTTISWOODE AND CO. 

NEW- STREET SOJJARE 






PREFACE 



TN literature, unlike law, a man frequently begins by 
A judging others, before he tries to do anything for 
himself. He begins by being a judge : and if he be 
tolerably successful as a judge, he is advanced (so to 
speak) to practise at the bar. A young and inexpe- 
rienced writer in a magazine is for the most part set to 
review books written generally by much older and 
wiser men than himself. If he do this tolerably well, 
he is by and by advanced to the writing of original 
articles. 

It was so with me. When I began to write for 
Fraser's Magazine^ a little more than nine years ago, 
my work was mainly to review books. Gradually, my 
dear friend the Editor thought I might try to walk 
alone. And in several volumes, which the public has 
received with much kindness and favour, the original 
essays, which I began to write at his suggestion, have 
been collected and republished. The present volume 



vi Preface. 

contains a selection from the critical essays of earlier 
years. These were written in the quiet and leisure of 
a country parish. They were founded on a thorough 
examination of the books they attempt to estimate; and 
they all express what was the writer's honest opinion, 
unbiassed by any kind of influence. It would have 
been easy to select smarter essays ; but after a few 
years one looks back with little pleasure on ill-natured 
writing. Anything of that kind has been excluded 
from this volume. 

A. K. H. B. 

March 13, 1865. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 
* I. ARCHBISHOP WHATELY ON BACON . , . I 

1 II. RECENT METAPHYSICAL WORKS LEWES, MAURICE, 

FLEMING ....... 40 

J III. THORNDALE ; OR, THE CONFLICT OF OPINIONS . 80 

^ IV. JAMES MONTGOMERY . .... . . 1 24 

V. FRIENDS IN COUNCIL . » . . . l6j 

x VI. EDGAR ALLAN POE . . . . . 2 1 

VII. GEORGE STEPHENSON AND THE RAILWAY . . 249 

VIII. OULITA THE SERF . . . . . .282 

IX. THE ORGAN QUESTION . . . . . 32O 

X. LIFE AT THE WATER CURE . • . • 344 



THE 

CRITICAL ESSAYS 

OF A 

COUNTRY PARSON. 
I. 

ARCHBISHOP WHATELY ON BACON.* 

THIS is in every way a remarkable book. We have 
before us in this volume the most generally 
popular work of the greatest and meanest man of his 
time, with a Commentary of Annotations by the man 
who, of all living authors, approaches in many of his 
intellectual characteristics nearest to Bacon himself. 
We find in the writings of Archbishop Whately the 
same independence of thought which distinguishes the 
writings of Bacon ; the same profusion of illustration 
by happy analogies which is characteristic of Bacon's 
later works ; the same clearness, point, and precision 
of style. We do not wonder that the accomplished 

* Bacon's Essays : with Annotations by Richard Whately, D.D., Arch- 
bishop of Dublin. London: 1857. 
B 



2 Archhishop Wloately on Bacon. 

prelate, accustomed (as he tells us in his Preface) to 
write down from time to time the observations which 
suggested themselves to him in reading Bacon's Essays, 
should have found them grow beneath his hand into a 
volume ; and we cannot but regard it as a boon con- 
ferred upon all educated men, that this volume has 
been given to the world. Nor must we omit to remark, 
in this age of readers for mere entertainment, that 
although the volume be a large one, written by an 
archbishop, and consisting of comments upon the 
thoughts of a great philosopher, the book is invested 
with such an attractive interest, that it cannot fail to 
prove a readable and entertaining one, even to minds 
unaccustomed to high-class thought and incapable of 
severe thinking. The somewhat severe terseness of 
the Essays is relieved by the lighter and more popular 
tone of the Annotations. Archbishop Whately's mind 
is of that nature that it takes up each of a vast range 
of subjects with equal ease, and apparently with equal 
gusto ; grappling with a great difficulty or unravelling 
a great perplexity with no more appearance of effort 
than when lightly touching a social folly, such as might 
have invited the notice of the author of The Book of 
Snobs, or when playfully blowing to the winds an error 
not worth serious refutation. Hardly ever in the range 
of literature have we observed the workings of an 
intellect in which nervous strength is so combined with 
delicate tact. We are reminded of Mr. Nasmyth's 
steam-hammer, which can smash a mass of steel in 
shivers, or by successive taps drive a nail through a 
half-inch plank. 



Archbishop Whately on Bacon. 3 

We are thankful that in noticing this book, we are 
concerned rather with the Annotator than with the 
Essayist ; for not without much pain can we look back 
on Lord Bacon's history. There is something jarring 
in the mingled feelings of admiration and disgust with 
which we think of Bacon's greatness and meanness ; 
his intellectual grasp, his keen insight, his wit, his 
imagination sober in its wildest flights, — his serene 
temper, his brilliant conversation, his courtly manners, 
his freedom from arrogance and pretence ; and then, 
on the other side, his cold heart and mean spirit, his 
low and unworthy ambition, his despicable selfishness, 
his flagrant dishonesty, his crawling servility, his perfidy 
as a friend, his sneakiness as a patriot, his corruption as 
a judge. As to his intellectual greatness there can be 
no question ; though there can be no error more com- 
plete than to regard him as the inventor or discoverer 
of the Inductive Philosophy. He did not invent it ; 
he did not skilfully apply it. His philosophy differed 
from that which preceded it less in method than in aim ; 
and it is glory enough to have mainly contributed to 
turn the thoughts and the efforts of thoughtful and 
energetic men away from the profitless philosophy of 
the schools to the practical good of mankind. In the 
commodis humanis inservire we have the end and the 
spirit of the Baconian philosophy. 

The Essays constitute Bacon's most popular work, 
if not his greatest. They illustrate in thought and style 
what was said of him by Ben Jonson, that c No man 
ever spoke more neatly, more pressly, more weightily, 
nor suffered less emptiness, less idleness, in what he 

E 2 



4 Archbishop Whately on Bacon. 

uttered.' Their subjects are well known. We have 
in them the thoughts of Bacon on a considerable range 
of matters, briefly expressed, most of them not occupy- 
ing more than a page or two. They may have been 
written, many of them, at a short sitting, though they 
manifestly give us the results of mature and protracted 
thought. And here and there occur those pregnant, 
suggestive sentences which Archbishop Whately has 
taken as texts for his own observations. The Arch- 
bishop reminds us in his Preface, by way of guarding 
himself from the imputation of presumption in adding 
to what Bacon has said on many subjects, that the word 
c Essay,' which has now come to signify a full and 
careful treatise on a subject, was in Bacon's days more 
correctly understood as meaning a slight sketch to be 
rilled up and followed out ; a something to set the reader 
a-thinking : and the Annotations, which form by a great 
deal the larger part of the book, contain the reflections 
and remarks which have been suggested to the Arch- 
bishop in his reading of the Essays. 

The Annotations are of all degrees, from a sentence 
or two of inference or illustration, to a pretty full dis- 
course on some topic more or less directly suggested 
by Bacon. The writer frequently presses opinions 
which he has elsewhere maintained, and gives many 
extracts from his own published works. We also find 
several quotations from other authors, selected (we 
need not say) with great judgment ; and showing us 
incidentally how wide is the Archbishop's reading, and 
how completely he keeps up with whatever is valuable 
in even the lighter literature of the day. In that por- 



Archbishop Whately on B 



aeon. 



tion of this volume which is properly Dr. Whately's 
own, we have the acute observations of a writer who 
knows both books and men ; of a keen observer ; a 
thinker almost always sound amid extraordinary inde- 
pendence and originality ; a master of a style so beau- 
tifully lucid alike in thought and expression, that we 
hardly feel, as we follow in the track, how difficult it 
would be to tread that path without the direction of a 
guide so able and so sympathetic. 

The characteristics of Archbishop Whately are very 
marked ; and his negative characteristics not less so 
than his positive. No thoughtful man can become 
acquainted with his writings, without being struck quite 
as much by what this distinguished prelate is not, as by 
what he is. Indeed, what the Archbishop of Dublin 
is not, is perhaps the thing which at first impresses us 
most deeply. We discover in his works the produc- 
tions of a mind which can apply itself to the most 
diverse subjects, and give forth the soundest and 
shrewdest sense on all, expressed in the most felicitous 
forms. We cannot but remark his vast information ; 
and his ripe wisdom, moral, social, and political. But, 
after all, the thing that strikes us most is, how tho- 
roughly different Archbishop Whately is from most 
people's idea of an archbishop. We associate with so 
elevated a dignitary a certain ponderousness of mind : 
we assume that his intellect must be a machine which 
by its weight and power is rather unfitted for light work : 
and we are taken by surprise when we find a prelate 
so dignified combining with the graver strength of under- 
standing a liveliness, pith, and point, — a versatility, 



6 Archbishop Whately on Bacon. 

wit, and playfulness, — which without taking an atom 
from that respect which is due to his high position, 
yet put us at our ease in his presence, and fit him 
for the attractive discussion of almost every topic which 
can interest the scholar and the gentleman. The 
general idea of an archbishop is of something eminently 
respectable : perhaps rather dull and prosy ; never 
startling us in any way by thought or style ; — looking 
at all the world through his own medium, and from his 
own elevated point of view ; — and above all, an in- 
tensely safe man. The very reverse of all this is 
Archbishop Whately. Never, indeed, does he say 
anything inconsistent with his dignified position : but 
his works show him to us (and we know him by his 
works alone) as the independent thinker, often thinking 
very differently from the majority of men, — the tho- 
rough man of the world, in the true sense of that 
phrase, — perfectly versant in the ways of living men, 
from the tricks of the petty tradesman up to the diplo- 
macies of cabinets and the social ethics of exclusive 
circles, — at home in the literature of the hour no less 
than in the weightier letters of philosophy, theology, 
and politics, — the master of eloquent logic, from the 
heavy artillery which demolishes a stronghold of error 
or scepticism, to the light touch that unravels a para- 
dox or puts a troublesome simpleton in his right place, 
— the master of wit, from the half-playful breath which 
shows up a little social folly, to the scathing sarcasm 
which turns the laugh against the scoffer, and which 
shows the would-be wise as the most arrant of fools. 
As for Archbishop Whately's positive characteristics, 



Archbishop Whately on Bacon. 7 

we believe that most of his intelligent readers will agree 
with us when we place foremost among these his 
acuteness and independence of thought. The latter of 
these qualities he possesses almost in excess. We 
believe that to the Archbishop of Dublin the fact that 
any opinion is very generally entertained, so far from 
being a recommendation, is rather a reason for regard- 
ing it with suspicion. It is amusing how regularly 
we find it occurring in the prefaces to his works, that 
one reason for the publication of each is his belief that 
erroneous views are commonly entertained as to the 
subject of it. And when we consider how most men 
receive their opinions upon all subjects ready-made, we 
cannot appreciate too highly one who, in the emphatic 
sense of the phrase, thinks for himself. It is right to 
add that there is hardly an instance in which so much 
originality of thought can be found in conjunction with 
so much justice and sobriety of thought. In Arch- 
bishop Whately' s writings we have independence with- 
out the least trace of wrongheadedness. His views, 
especially in his Lectures on a Future State^ on Good 
and Evil Angels^ and on the Characters of the Apostles^ 
are often startling at the first glance, because very dif- 
ferent from those to which we have grown accus- 
tomed : but he generally succeeds in convincing us 
that his opinion is the sound and natural one ; and 
where he fails to carry our conviction along with him, 
he leaves us persuaded of his good faith, and sensible 
that much may be said on his part. 

Another striking characteristic of Archbishop 
Whately is, his extraordinary power of illustrating 



8 Archbishop Whately on Bacon. 

moral truths and principles by analogies to external 
nature. Not even Abraham Tucker possessed this 
power in so eminent a degree : and the Archbishop's 
illustrations are always free from that grossness and 
vulgarity which often deform those of Tucker, who 
(as he himself tells us) did not scruple to take a figure 
from the kitchen or the stable if it could make his 
meaning plainer. We cannot call to mind any English 
author who employs imagery in such a profuse degree ; 
yet without the faintest suspicion of that nerveless and 
aimless accumulation of figures and comparisons which 
constitutes what is vulgarly termed Jloiveriness of style. 
We have no fine things put in for mere fine-writing's 
sake. Dr. WhateJy's illustrations are not only inva- 
riably apt and striking : they really illustrate his point, 
they throw light upon it, and make it plainer than 
it was before. They are hardly ever long drawn 
out ; consisting very frequently in a happy analogy 
suggested in one clause of a sentence, — the writer 
being anxious to make that step in his reasoning clear, 
yet too much bent upon the ultimate conclusion he is 
aiming at to linger upon that step longer than is neces- 
sary to make it so. 

To these literary qualifications we add, that Arch- 
bishop Whately's information, though evidently reach- 
ing over a vast field, is yet minutely accurate in the 
smallest details ; and without the least tinge of pedantry, 
the fine scholarship of the writer often shines through 
his work. It is almost superfluous to allude to the 
invariable clearness, point, and felicity of the Arch- 
bishop's English style, which often warms into elo- 



Archbishop Whately on Bacon. 9 

quence of the highest class, — effective and telling, 
without one grain of claptrap. 

We should give an imperfect view of the charac- 
teristics of the Archbishop of Dublin, if we did not 
mention, as a marked one, his intense honesty of 
purpose -, his evident desire to arrive at exact truth, 
and his carefulness to state opinions and arguments 
with perfect fairness. Nor should his fearless out- 
spokenness be forgotten. He does not hesitate to call 
an opponent's argument nonsense when he has proved 
it to be so. c Often very silly, and not seldom very 
mischievous,'* is his description of the speculations of 
writers of the Emerson school. Our readers are 
perhaps acquainted with the Archbishop's remarks 
upon some of the German writers of the present 
day : — 

The attention their views have attracted, considering their 
extreme absurdity, is something quite wonderful. But there are 
many persons who are disposed to place confidence in anyone, in 
proportion, not to his sound judgment ; but to his ingenuity and 
learning ; qualifications which are sometimes found in men (such 
as those writers) who are utterly deficient in common sense and 
reasoning powers, and knowledge of human nature, and who 
consequently fall into such gross absurdities as would be, in any 
matter unconnected with religion, regarded as unworthy of serious 
attention, f 

It is impossible to read the Annotations without 
feeling what an acute observer of men is Archbishop 
Whately. How carefully, in his passage through life, 
has his quick eye gathered up the characteristics of 

* Preface, p. v. 

f Lectures on the Characters of Our Lord's Apostles, p. 1 66. 



io Archbishop Whately on Bacon. 

those persons with whom he has been brought in con- 
tact, — their pretensions, foibles, tricks, and errors : 
and how well he turns his recollections to account, 
when an example or illustration is needed ! We like- 
wise find many indications that he has been keenly 
alive, not more to the ways of men than to the little 
phenomena of nature. We refer our readers particu- 
larly to a passage on the degrees of cold which are 
experienced in the course of a single night, and we 
wonder how many persons, even of those who gene- 
rally live in the country, are aware of the following 
fact: — 

Anyone who is accustomed to go out before daylight, will 
often, in the winter, find the roads full of liquid mud half-an- 
hour before dawn, and by sunrise as haid as a rock. Then those 
who have been in bed will often observe that c it was a hard frost 
last night,' when in truth there had been no frost at all till day- 
break. — (p. 305.) 

And the final feature we remark in Archbishop 
Whately's character, is one which must afford the 
highest satisfaction to all who have, in their own expe- 
rience, found earnest personal religion existing most 
markedly in conjunction with great weakness, ignorance, 
and prejudice ; and to all who have ever mingled in the 
society of able and cultivated men, who thought that 
contemptuously to put religion aside was the indication 
of mental vigour and enlightenment. It is most satis- 
factory to find the writings of one of the strongest- 
minded men of his time, all pervaded and inspirited by 
a religious principle and feeling, earnest, unaffected, 



Archbishop Whately on Bacon. 1 1 

really practical and influential, — as perfectly free from 
weakness as from self-assertion and self-conceit. 

We believe that from this volume of Annotations 
we could construct a tolerably complete scheme of 
Archbishop Whately's views on politics, morals, social 
ethics, and the general conduct of life. We have some 
indication of his peculiar tastes and bent from observing 
which among Bacon's Essays he passes by without re- 
mark. He has little to say concerning ' Masques and 
Triumphs.' We should judge that his nature has little 
about it of that ' soft side ' which leads to take delight in 
the recurrence of periodical festal occasions, with their 
kindly remembrances : we should judge that a solitary 
Christmas would be much less of a trial to him than it 
would be to us ; although the instances of Dickens and 
Jerrold prove that the warmest feeling about such 
seasons and associations is quite consistent with even 
extreme opinions on the side of progress. Then the 
Archbishop passes the Essays on c Building ' and 'Gar- 
dens ' without a word ; although these subjects would 
have set many men of? into a rhapsody of delighted 
details and fancies. We judge that Dr. Whately has 
not a very keen relish for external nature for its own 
sake : his chief interest in it appears to be in the tracing 
of analogies between the material and moral worlds. 
The fact that Bacon's ideas both on Building and 
Gardening are now quite out of date would be only the 
stronger reason to many men for launching out upon 
the subject : and how deeply could some sympathise 
with Bacon in his ideal picture of a princely palace, — 
one of those delightful palaces in the air about whose 



12, Archbishop Whately on Bacon, 

site there are permitted no drawbacks or shortcomings 
on the part of Nature, — round which ancestral woods 
grow at a moment's notice, and within whose view 
noble rivers, fed by no springs, can flow up-hill, — and 
in whose architecture expense and time need never be 
thought of. But not many men are likely ever to live 
in palaces : not many more, perhaps, would care to 
picture out such a life for themselves : and we prefer 
to Bacon's palace the delightful description in Mr. 
Loudon's Encyclopedia of Architecture of what he calls 
the Beau Ideal English Villa. 

We have long regarded the Archbishop of Dublin 
as, in several respects, almost the foremost man of this 
day. It says little for the age's intelligence, that while 
religious works of inconceivable badness and impudence 
sell by scores of thousands of copies, Archbishop 
Whately commands an audience, fit indeed, but com- 
paratively few : for his writings possess a very high 
degree of that most indispensable, though not highest, of 
all qualities, interest. He is never heavy nor tiresome. 
Very dull people may understand, though they may not 
appreciate him. But we are persuaded that his arch- 
bishopric lessens the number of his readers. Readers 
for mere amusement are afraid to begin what has been 
written by so distinguished a man. 

We need hardly say that it is wholly impossible 
within the limits of a short article to give any just idea, 
either of the variety of topics which the Archbishop has 
discussed, or of the manner in which he has discussed 
them. Bacon himself described his Essays as c handling 
those things wherein both men's lives and persons are 



Archbishop JVhately on Bacon. 13 

most conversant :' and Archbishop Whately's Anno- 
tations, ranging over the same wide field, can be 
described, as to their scope, in no more definite terms. 
But the same necessary want of unity which makes the 
book so hard to speak of as a whole, renders it the 
easier to consider in its separate parts. It consists of 
precious detached pieces, each of which loses nothing 
by being individually regarded. But before glancing at 
some of the topics which the Archbishop has treated, 
we wish to give our readers a few specimens of those 
admirable illustrations of moral truths by physical analo- 
gies which form so striking a feature of his writings : — 

There are two kinds of orators, the distinction between whom 
might be thus illustrated. When the moon shines brightly we 
are apt to say, ' How beautiful is this moonlight ! ' but in the day- 
time, ' How beautiful are the trees, the fields, the mountains ! ' — 
and, in short, all the objects that are illuminated ; we never speak 
of the sun that makes them so. Just in the same way, the really 
greatest orator shines like the sun, making you think much oi the 
things he is speaking of : the second-best shines like the moon, 
making you think much of him and his eloquence. — (p. 327, 
Annotation on Essay ' Of Discourse.') 

In most subjects, the utmost knowledge that any man can 
attain to, is but < a little learning ' in comparison of what he 
remains ignorant of. The view resembles that of an American 
forest, in which the more trees a man cuts down, the greater is 
the expanse of wood he sees around him. — (p. 446, Annotation 
on Essay * Of Studies.') 

In an annotation on the Essay c Of Negotiating,' 
Archbishop Whately mentions, as a caution to be 
observed, that in combating, whether as a speaker or a 
writer, deep-rooted prejudices, and maintaining unpopu- 
lar truths, the point to be aimed at should be, to adduce 



14 Archbishop Whately on Bacon, 

what is sufficient, and not much more than is sufficient, 
to prove your conclusion. You affront men's self- 
esteem and awaken their distrust, by proving the 
extreme absurdity of thinking differently from yourself : 
and 

in this way, the very clearness and force of the demonstration will, 
with some minds, have an opposite tendency to the one desired. 
Labourers who are employed in driving wedges into a block of 
wood, are careful to use blows of no greater force than is just 
sufficient. If they strike too hard, the elasticity of the wood will 
throtv out the nvedge. — (p. 432.) 

On the Essay c Of Praise,' Archbishop Whately 
remarks, with admirable truth, that it is needless to 
insist, as many do, upon the propriety of not being 
wholly indifferent to the opinions formed of us ; as that 
tendency of our nature stands more in need of keeping 
under than of encouraging or vindicating : — 

It must be treated like the grass on a lawn which you wish to 
keep in good order ; you neither attempt, nor wish to destroy the 
grass ; but you mow it down from time to time, as close as you 
possibly can, well trusting that there will be quite enough left, 
and that it will be sure to grow again. — (p. 491.) 

On the Essay e Of Youth and Age,' we have many 
excellent remarks upon the fact to which the experience 
of most men bears testimony, that great precocity of 
understanding is rarely followed by superior intellect in 
after-life ; and more especially that there is nothing less 
promising than, in early youth, c a certain full-formed, 
settled, and, as it may be called, adult character :' — 

A lad who has, to a degree that excites wonder and admira- 
tion, the character and demeanour of an intelligent man of mature 



Archbishop Whately on Bacon, 15 

years, will probably be that, and nothing more, all his life, and 
will cease accordingly to be anything remarkable, because it was 
the precocity alone that ever made him so. It is remarked by 
greyhound fanciers that a well-formed, compact-shaped puppy, 
never makes a fleet dog. They see more promise in the loose- 
jointed, awkward, clumsy ones. And even so, there is a kind of 
crudity and unsettledness in the minds of those young persons who 
turn out ultimately the most eminent. — (p. 405.) 

How admirably true ! We heartily wish that many 
injudicious parents would lay this to heart. Who is 
there who does not remember how, at school and 
college, some cautious, slow-speaking, never-commit- 
ting-himself lad, whose seeming precocity of judgment 
was mainly the result of stolidity of understanding and 
slowness of circulation, was evermore thrust as a grand 
exemplar before the view of those whose quicker intel- 
lect and warmer heart often got them into scrapes from 
which he kept clear, but promised what he could never 
attain, till the very name of prudence, discretion, reserve, 
became hateful and disgusting ! And how regularly 
that pattern boy or lad has proved in after-life the dullard 
and booby which his young companions, in their more 
natural frank-heartedness, instinctively knew and felt 
he was even then ! 

On the Essay c Of Friendship ' the Archbishop 
observes : — 

It may be worth noticing as a curious circumstance, when per- 
sons past forty, before they were at all acquainted, form together 
a very close intimacy of friendship. For grafts of old wood to 
take, there must be a wonderful congeniality between the trees. — 
(p. 276.) 

On Bacon's remark, that c a man that is young in 



1 6 Archhishop Whately on Bacon. 

years may be old in hours, if he have lost no time,' the 
Archbishop says : — 

And this may be, not only from his having had better oppor- 
tunities, but also from his understanding better how to learn by- 
experience. Several different men, who have all had equal, or 
even the very same, experience, — that is, have been witnesses or 
agents in the same transactions, — will often be found to resemble 
so many different men looking at the same book. One, perhaps, 
though he distinctly sees black marks on white paper, has never 
learned his letters ; another can read, but is a stranger to the 
language in which the book is written ; another has an acquaint- 
ance with the language, but understands it imperfectly 5 another 
is familiar with the language, but is a stranger to the subject of 
the book, and wants power or previous instruction to enable him 
fully to take in the author's drift ; while another, again, perfectly 
comprehends the whole. — (p. 400.) 

In an annotation on the Essay c Of Dispatch,' we 
find some thoughts on the advantage of knowing when 
to act with promptitude and when with deliberation, 
and of being able suitably to meet either case. Then 
the Archbishop goes on as follows : — 

If you cannot find a counseller who combines these two kinds of 
qualification (which is a thing not to be calculated on), you should 
seek for some of each sort ; one, to devise and mature measures 
that will admit of delay ; and another, to make prompt guesses, 
and suggest sudden expedients. A bow, such as is approved by 
our modern toxophilites, must be backed — that is, made of two 
slips of wood glued together : one a very elastic, but somewhat 
brittle wood 5 the other much less elastic, but very tough. The 
one gives the requisite spring, the other keeps it from breaking. 
If you have two such counsellors as are here spoken of, you are 
provided with a backed bow. — (p. 250.) 

Describing the two opposite sorts of men who equally 
precipitate a country into anarchy, the one sort by 



Archbishop Whately on Bacon. ij 

obstinately resisting all innovations, and the other by 
recklessly hurrying into violent changes without reason, 
the Archbishop says : — 

The two kinds of absurdity here adverted to may be compared 
respectively to the acts of two kinds of irrational animals, a moth, 
and a horse. The moth rushes into a flame, and is burned : and 
the horse obstinately stands still in a stable that is on fire, and is 
burned likewise. One may often meet with persons of opposite 
dispositions, though equally unwise, who are accordingly prone 
respectively to these opposite errors, the one partaking more of the 
character of the moth, and the other of the horse. — (p. 244.) 

Lord Macaulay tells us, and experience confirms his 
statement, that it is not easy to make a simile go on all 
fours, and incomparably more difficult to attain strict 
accuracy when an analogy is drawn out to any length. 
But Archbishop Whately overcomes this difficulty. 
There is no hitch whatever in the following com- 
parison, though it runs to very minute and exact 
details : — 

The effect produced by any writing or speech of an argumen- 
tative character, on any subject in which diversity of opinion pre- 
vails, may be compared — supposing the argument to be of any 
weight — to the effects of a fire-engine on a conflagration. That 
portion of the water which falls on solid stone walls, is poured 
out where it is not needed. That, again, which falls on blazing 
beams and rafters, is cast off in volumes of hissing steam, and 
will seldom avail to quench the fire. But that which is poured 
on woodwork that is just beginning to kindle, may stop the 
burning ; and that which wets the rafters not yet ignited, but in 
danger, may save them from catching fire. Even so, those who 
already concur with the writer as to some point, will feel gratified 
with, and perhaps bestow high commendation on, an able defence 
of the opinions they already hold ; and those, again, who have 
fully made up their minds on the opposite side, are more likely 

C 



1 8 Archbishop Whately on Bacon. 

to be displeased than to be convinced. But both of these parties 
are left nearly in the same mind as before. Those, however, who 
are in a hesitating and doubtful state, may very likely be decided 
by forcible arguments. And those who have not hitherto con- 
sidered the subject, may be induced to adopt the opinions which 
they find supported by the strongest reasons. But the readiest 
and warmest approbation a writer meets with, will usually be 
from those whom he has not convinced, because they were con- 
vinced already. And the effect the most important and the most 
difficult to be produced, he will usually, when he does produce it, 
hear the least of. — (p. 432.) 

We do not know where to find a comparison more 
correct or more beautiful, than that with which the 
highly-gifted prelate concludes his remarks on those 
writers who inculcate morality, with an exclusion of all 
reference to religious principle. He gives us to under- 
stand that the resolute manner in which Miss Edge- 
worth, in her works, ignored Christianity, was the 
result of an entire disbelief in its doctrines. But even 
this sad fact leaves her open to the charge of having 
falsified poetical truth ; inasmuch as it cannot be denied, 
that Christianity, true or false, does exist, and does 
exercise a material influence on the feelings and conduct 
of some of the believers in it. And to represent all 
sorts of people as involved in all sorts of circumstances, 
while yet none ever makes the least reference to a 
religious motive, is artistically unnatural. The graver 
objection still remains, that the moral excellences de- 
scribed in non-religious fictions as existing, cannot exist, 
cannot be realised, except by resorting to principles 
which, in those fictions, are unnoticed. And the young 
reader should therefore be reminded 



Archbishop Whately on Bacon, ig 

that all these ' things that are lovely and of good report,' which 
have been placed before him, are the genuine fruits of the Holy- 
Land ; though the spies who have brought them bring also an 
evil report of that land, and would persuade us to remain wander- 
ing in the wilderness. — (p. 468.) 

In pointing out the unfairness to a new colony 
of making it the receptacle of the blackguards and 
scapegraces of the old country, by the system of penal 
transportation, the Archbishop happily illustrates the 
way in which people of not very logical minds are 
brought to associate things which are not merely 
unconnected, but inconsistent : — 

In other subjects, as well as in this, I have observed that two 
distinct objects may, by being dexterously presented, again and 
again in quick succession, to the mind of a cursory reader, be so 
associated together in his thoughts, as to be conceived capable, 
when in fact they are not, of being actually combined in practice. 
The fallacious belief thus induced bears a striking resemblance to 
the optical illusion effected by that ingenious and philosophical 
toy called the ' thaumatrope 5 ' in which two objects painted on 
opposite sides of a card,— for instance, a man and a horse, a bird 
and a cage, — are, by a quick rotatory motion, made so to impress 
the eye in combination, as to form one picture, of the man on the 
horse's back, — the bird in the cage, &c. As soon as the card is 
allowed to remain at rest, the figures, of course, appear as they 
really are, separate and on opposite sides. A mental illusion 
closely analogous to this is produced, when, by a rapid and 
repeated transition from one subject to another, alternately, the 
mind is deluded into an idea of the actual combination of things 
that are really incompatible. The chief part of the defence which 
various writers have advanced in favour of the system of penal 
colonies, consists, in truth, of a sort of intellectual thaumatrope. 
The prosperity of the colony, and the repression of crime, are, by 
a sort of rapid whirl, presented to the mind as combined in one 
picture. A very moderate degree of calm and fixed attention 



20 Archbishop Wbately on Bacon. 

soon shows that the two objects are painted on opposite sides of 
the card. — (p. 334.) 

On the risk run by superstitious persons of falling 



Minds strongly predisposed to superstition, may be compared 
to heavy bodies just balanced on the verge of a precipice. The 
slightest touch will send them over 5 and then, the greatest 
exertion that can be made may be insufficient to arrest their fall, 
—(p. 155.) 

Illustration is sometimes the most cogent of ar- 
gument. A volume of reasoning against ultra-con- 
servatism would not equal, for general impression, the 
following plain statement of the case : — 

Is there not, then, some reason for the ridicule which Bacon 
speaks of, as attaching to those ' who too much reverence old 
times ? ' To say that no changes shall take place is to talk idly. 
We might as well pretend to control the motions of the earth. 
To resolve that none shall take place except what are undesigned 
and accidental, is to resolve that though a clock may gain or lose 
indefinitely, at least we will take care that it shall never be regu- 
lated. ' If time ' (to use Bacon's warning words) ' alters things 
to the worse, and wisdom and counsel shall not alter to the better, 
what shall be the end ? ' — (pp. 236-7.) 

We shall throw together, without remark, some 
further examples of Archbishop Whately's power of' 
illustrating the moral by the physical. So marked a 
feature in his intellectual portraiture deserves, we 
think, extended notice. But it is only by studying the 
Annotations for themselves, that our readers can form 
any just idea of the affluence and exuberance of happy 
imagery with which they sparkle all over. 

To these small wares, enumerated by Bacon, might be added a 



Archbishop Whately on Bacon. 2,1 

very hackneyed trick, which yet is wonderfully successful — to 
affect a delicacy about mentioning particulars, and hint at what 
you could bring forward, only you do not wish to give offence. 
' We could give many cases to prove that such and such a medical 
system is all a delusion, and a piece of quackery ; but we abstain, 
through tenderness for individuals, from bringing names before 
the Public.' ' I have observed many things — which, however, I 
will not particularise — which convince me that Mr. Such-a-one 
is unfit for his office 5 and others have made the same remark ; 
but I do not like to bring them forward,' &c. &c. 

Thus an unarmed man keeps the unthinking in awe, by assuring 
them that he has a pair of loaded pistols in his pocket, though he 
is loth to produce them. — (p. 210.) 

A man who plainly perceives that, as Bacon observes, there are 
some cases which call for promptitude, and others which require 
delay, and who has also sagacity enough to perceive 'which is 
which, will often be mortified at perceiving that he has come too 
late for some things, and too soon for others ; — that he is like a 
skilful engineer, who perceives how he could, fifty years earlier, 
have effectually preserved an important harbour which is now 
irrecoverably silted up, and how he could, fifty years hence, 
though not at present, reclaim from the sea thousands of acres of 
fertile land at the delta of some river. — (p. 203.) 

As in contemplating an ebbing tide, we are sometimes in doubt, 
on a short inspection, whether the sea is really receding, because, 
from time to time, a wave will dash further up the shore than 
those which have preceded it, but, if we continue our observa- 
tions long enough, we see plainly that the boundary of the land 
is on the whole advancing ; so here, by extending our view over 
many countries and through several ages, we may distinctly per- 
ceive the tendencies which would have escaped a more confined 
research.— (p. 300.) 

An ancient Greek colony was like what gardeners call a layer ; 
a portion of the parent tree, with stem, twigs, and leaves, im- 
bedded in fresh soil till it had taken root, and then severed. A 
modern colony is like a handful of twigs and leaves pulled off at 
random, and thrown into the earth to take their chance. — (p. 341.) 

* There be that can pack the cards, and yet cannot play well," 



22, Archbishop Whately on Bacon. 

Those whom Bacon here so well describes, are men of a clear 
and quick sight, but short-sighted. They are ingenious in par- 
ticulars, but cannot take a comprehensive view of a whole. Such 
a man may make a good captain, but a bad general. He may be 
clever at surprising a piquet, but would fail in the management 
of a great army and the conduct of a campaign. He is like a 
chess-player who takes several pawns, but is checkmated. — 
(p. 215.) 

The truth is, that in all the serious and important affairs of life 
men are attached to what they have been used to ; in matters of 
ornament they covet novelty ; in all systems and institutions — in 
all the ordinary business of life — in all fundamentals — they cling 
to what is the established course ; in matters of detail — in what 
lies, as it were, on the surface — they seek variety. Man may, in 
reference to this point, be compared to a tree whose stem and 
main branches stand year after year, but whose leaves and flowers 
are fresh every season. — (p. 228.) 

In no point is the record of past times more instructive to those 
capable of learning from other experience than their own, than in 
what relates to the history of reactions. 

It has been often remarked by geographers that a river flowing 
through a level country of soft alluvial soil never keeps a straight 
course, but winds regularly to and fro, in the form of the letter S 
many times repeated. And a geographer, on looking at the 
course of any stream as marked on a map, can at once tell whether 
it flows along a plain (like the river Meander, which has given 
its name to such windings), or through a rocky and hilly country. 
It is found, indeed, that if a straight channel be cut for any 
stream in a plain consisting of tolerably soft soil, it will never 
long continue straight, unless artificially kept so, but becomes 
crooked, and increases its windings more and more every year. 
The cause is, that any little wearing away of the bank in the 
softest part of the soil, on one side, occasions a set of the stream 
against this hollow, which increases it, and at the same time 
drives the water aslant against the opposite bank a little lower 
down. This wears away that bank also $ and thus the stream is 
again driven against a part of the first bank, still lower ; and so 
on, till by the wearing away of the banks at these points on each 



Archbishop Whately on Bacon. 33 

side, and the deposit of mud (gradually becoming dry land) in 
the comparatively still water between them, the course of the 
stream becomes sinuous, and its windings increase more and more. 
And even thus, in human affairs, we find alternate movements, 
in nearly opposite directions, taking place from time to time, and 
generally bearing some proportion to each other in respect of the 
violence of each ; even as the highest flood-tide is succeeded by 
the lowest ebb. — (p. 154.) 

Very beautifully, in the following paragraph, does 
the Archbishop illustrate the law that whatever is to 
last long, must grow slowly : — 

We hear of volcanic islands thrown up in a few days to a for- 
midable size, and in a few weeks or months, sinking down again 
or washed away ; while other islands, which are the summits of 
banks covered with weed and drift-sand, continue slowly increasing 
year after year, century after century. The man who is in a 
hurry to see the full effect of his own tillage, should cultivate 
annuals, not forest trees. The clear-headed lover of truth is 
content to wait for the result of his. If he is wrong in the doc- 
trines he maintains, or the measures he proposes, at least it is not 
for the sake of immediate popularity. If he is right, it will be 
found out in time, though, perhaps, not in his time. The pre- 
parers of the mummies were (Herodotus says) driven out of the 
house by the family who had engaged their services, with execra- 
tions and stones ; but their work remains sound after three 
thousand years. — (p. 503.) 

Although these extracts have been given mainly to 
exemplify Archbishop Whately's mode of enforcing 
and illustrating his views, they may have served like- 
wise to give our readers some notion of the variety of 
topics treated in this volume, and of the Archbishop's 
opinions upon some of these. We hardly know how to 
attempt a description of the matter of the work, as 
distinguished from its manner. There are scores of 



24 Archbishop Whately on Bacon, 

paragraphs among the Annotations which might each 
supply material for extended review ; and we had 
marked many interesting passages with the intention of 
discussing at some length the views contained in them. 
But, even after weeding out of our list the topics 
which appeared of minor interest (the process was that 
of thinning rather than of weeding), so many remain, 
that we can do no more than glance at two or three. 

In the second edition of the work, just published, 
we find no material differences when compared with 
the first. Archbishop Whately's opinions have been 
too well considered to admit of change within a few 
months' space. But the minute reader will find 
here and there many little additions, which afford 
pleasant proof that the author is still thinking upon the 
subjects treated ; and which promise that, rich as this 
volume already is in wisdom and eloquence, it may yet 
be farther enriched by the farther observation and 
reflection of its writer. In the former edition the 
Essay ' On Faction ' was followed by no remarks : in 
the present edition it is followed by several annotations 
-—some of them suggested, we may believe, by recent 
occurrences in America. The following passage, of 
special interest at the present time, points out forcibly 
the advantage of having in a State aliquid impercussum 
— a central rallying-point detached from all party, and 
to which all parties may profess attachment : — 

Bacon's remark, that a Prince ought not to make it his policy 
to ( govern according to respect to factions,'' suggests a strong 
ground of preference of hereditary to elective sovereignty. For 
when a chief — whether called king, emperor, president, or by 
whatever name — is elected (whether for life, or for a term of 



Archbishop Whately on Bacon. 25 

years), he can hardly avoid being the head of a party. He who 
is elected will be likely to feel aversion towards those who have 
voted against him ; who may be, perhaps, nearly half of his 
subjects. And they again will be likely to regard him as an 
enemy, instead of feeling loyalty to him as their prince. 

And those again who have voted/or him, will consider him as 
being under an obligation to them, and expect him to show to 
them more favour than to the rest of his subjects ; so that he will 
be rather the head of a party than the king of a people. 

Then, too, when the throne is likely to become vacant — that 
is, when the king is old, or is attacked with any serious illness — 
what secret canvassing and disturbance of men's minds will take 
place ! The king himself will most likely wish that his son, or 
some other near relative or friend, should succeed him, and he 
will employ all his patronage with a view to such an election ; 
appointing to public offices not the fittest men, but those whom 
he can reckon on as voters. And others will be exerting them- 
selves to form a party against him ; so that the country will be 
hardly ever tranquil, and very seldom well-governed. 

If, indeed, men were very different from what they are, there 
might be superior advantages in an elective royalty ; but in the 
actual state of things, the disadvantages will in general greatly 
outweigh the benefits. 

Accordingly most nations have seen the advantage of hereditary 
royalty, notwithstanding the defects of such a constitution. 

We heartily wish that all parents would remember 
and act upon the Archbishop's view, as expressed in 
the following passage. We believe the caution is 
extensively needed. We believe that many injudicious 
parents (with the best intention) trench upon the 
incommunicable prerogative of the All-wise and the 
Almighty, by needlessly causing griefs and disappoint- 
ments to their children, under the idea that all this 
forms a wholesome discipline. They forget that the 
nature and effect of every event partaking of the 



z6 Archbishop Whately on Bacon. 

character of 'pain, is determined by the source it comes 
from. When the heaviest sorrow comes by God's 
appointment, we bow in submission ; and this not 
merely because we cannot help it, — because it is vain 
to repine — because God will take His own way, 
whether we like it or not, — but because we have 
perfect confidence in the Tightness of whatever God 
may do, and because we feel assured that there must 
be good reason for all He does, although we may not 
be able to discern that reason. As regards man, we 
have no such confidence. And parents may be assured 
that their foolish conduct towards their children in 
many cases is a training, but an extremely bad one ; 
it trains the children to a spirit of fruitless and therefore 
bitter resistance, and of dogged resentment. The 
philanthropist Howard, by taking the course the Arch- 
bishop reprobates, drove his son into a lunatic asylum. 
He followed that course rigorously and universally, and 
so the worst degree of mental disease ensued upon it. 
Most parents follow it only in part ; and the lesser evil 
follows, of alienated affection, loss of confidence, jaun- 
diced views, and a soured heart. Yet if any parent, on 
a cold morning, insists on his children remaining in that 
part of the room most distant from the fire, when their 
warming their little blue hands there could do no harm 
to any human being; or systematically refuses to permit 
them to go to £ children's parties,' not because they are 
asked to too many, but merely because it is good for them 
to be disappointed ; or, generally, seeks to repress the 
exhibition of gaiety and light-heartedness, because ' we 
must through much tribulation enter into the kingdom of 



Archbishop Whately on Bacon. 2 J 

God ; ' then let that parent be assured, that surely as 
the field sown with tares yielded a harvest of tares, so 
surely will this petty tyranny bring forth its natural 
result, of resentment and aversion. 

Most carefully should we avoid the error of which some parents, 
not (otherwise) deficient in good sense, commit, of imposing 
gratuitous restrictions and privations, and purposely inflicting 
needless disappointments, for the purpose of inuring children to 
the pains and troubles they will meet with in after-life. Yes, be 
assured they nvill meet with quite enough, in every portion of 
life, including childhood, without your strewing their path with 
thorns of your own providing. And often enough will you 
have to limit their amusements for the sake of needful study, 
to restrain their appetites for the sake of health, to chastise 
them for faults, and in various ways to inflict pain or privations 
for the sake of avoiding some greater evils. Let this always be 
explained to them whenever it is possible to do so ; and endea- 
vour in all cases to make them look on the parent as never the 
'voluntary giver of anything but good. To any hardships which 
they are convinced you inflict reluctantly, and to those which 
occur through the dispensation of the All-wise, they will more 
easily be trained to submit with a good grace, than to any gratui 
tous sufferings devised for them by fallible men. To raise hopes 
on purpose to produce disappointment, to give provocation 
merely to exercise the temper, and, in short, to inflict pain of any 
kind merely as a training for patience and fortitude — this is a 
kind of discipline which man should not presume to attempt. If 
such trials prove a discipline not so much of cheerful fortitude as 
of resentful aversion and suspicious distrust of the parent as a 
capricious tyrant, you will have only yourself to thank for this 
result. — (pp. 58-9.) 

Archbishop Whately is of opinion that the fear of 
punishment in a future life is a motive of more perma- 
nent force than that of temporal judgments* We quote 
his words : — 

It is true that some men, who are nearly strangers to such 



28 Archbishop Whately on Bacon. 

a habit, may be for a time more alarmed by the denunciation of 
immediate temporal judgments for their sins, than by any con- 
siderations relative to ' the things which are not seen and which 
are eternal.' But the effect thus produced is much less likely to 
be lasting, or while it lasts to be salutary, because temporal alarm 
does not tend to make men spiritually-minded, and any reforma- 
tion of manners it may have produced will not have been founded 
on Christian principles. — (pp. 61-2.) 

Upon this we remark that there can be no question 
that, were future punishments realised as substantially 
as temporal evils, they ought to have, and would have, 
a much greater effect in deterring from sinful conduct. 
But the great difficulty with which men have to contend 
is the essential impossibility of realising spiritual and 
unseen things in their true bulk and importance ; of 
feeling that a thing in the Bible, or in a sermon, is as 
real a thing as something in the daylight, material world. 
In no case is this difficulty more felt than in regard to 
future punishments in another life. We may be far 
mistaken : but the result of considerable experience of 
the ways and feelings of a rustic population, is some- 
thing of doubt whether in practice the fear of future 
punishment produces any effect in deterring from evil 
courses. A mountain, 'far away, may be concealed by 
a shilling held close to the eye ; and future woe seems 
to crass minds so distant and so misty, that a very small 
immediate gratification quite hides it from view. 

We remember, as illustrative of this, a circumstance 
related by a neighbouring clergyman. His parishioners 
were sadly addicted to drinking to excess. Men and 
women were alike given to this degrading vice. He 
did, of course, all he could to repress it, but all in vain. 



Archbishop Whately on Bacon, 2,9 

For many years, he said, he warned the drunkards in 
the most solemn manner of the doom they might expect 
in another world ; but, so far as he knew, not a pot of 
ale or glass of spirits the less was drunk in the parish in 
consequence of his denunciations. Future woe melted 
into mist in the presence of a replenished jug on a 
market-day. A happy thought struck the clergyman. 
In the neighbouring town there was a clever medical 
man, a vehement teetotaller. Him he summoned to 
his aid. The doctor came, and delivered a lecture on 
the physical consequences of drunkenness, illustrating 
his lecture with large diagrams which gave shocking 
representations of the stomach, lungs, heart, and other 
vital organs, as affected by alcohol. These things 
came home to the drunkards, who had not cared a rush 
for final perdition. The effect produced was tremen- 
dous. Almost all the men and women of the parish 
took the total-abstinence pledge; and since that day, 
drunkenness has nearly ceased in that parish. Nor 
was the improvement evanescent ; it has lasted for two 
or three years. 

The Archbishop, in the Annotations upon ' Simu- 
lation and Dissimulation,' discusses the question whether 
an author is justified in disowning the authorship of his 
anonymous productions. It is, indeed, a considerable 
annoyance when meddling and impertinent persons, in 
spite of every indication that the subject is a disagreeable 
one, persist in trying by fishing questions to discover 
whether we know who wrote such an article in Fraser's 
Magazine or the Edinburgh Review ; and though no 
man of good sense or taste will do this, no author is 



30 Archbishop VFhately on Bacon. 

safe in the existing abundance of men who are devoid 
of both these qualities. We have known instances in 
which the subject was recurred to time after time by 
impertinent questioners ; and in which, by sudden 
enquiries put in the presence of many listeners, and by 
interrogating the relatives and intimate friends of the 
supposed writer, attempts were made to elicit the fact. 
It is curious to remark the various opinions which 
have been put on record as to the casuistry of such 
cases. There is but one opinion as to the extreme 
impertinence of the questioners : and so far as they are 
concerned, the curtest refusal to answer their enquiries 
would be the fittest way of meeting them. But, un- 
happily, a refusal to reply will in many cases be re- 
garded as an answer in the affirmative : and if the only 
alternatives were a correct answer and no answer, any 
meddling fool might reveal a literary secret of the 
highest importance. Dr. Johnson took up the ground 
that an author is justified in directly denying that he 
wrote his anonymous writings. Sir Walter Scott 
expressly declared that he was not the author of the 
Waverley Novels. Mr. Samuel Warren, when a lad 
at school, with characteristic presumption wrote to Sir 
Walter as such ; and Sir Walter's answer, published 
in Mr. Warren's Miscellanies, expressly repudiates the 
authorship. Mr. Samuel Rogers drew a nice distinc- 
tion. Some forward individual, in his presence, taxed 
Scott with the authorship of Waverley ; Sir Walter 
replied, c Upon my honour, I am not : ' and Rogers 
thought that Scott might fairly have replied in the 
negative, but that he ought not to have said c Upon 



Archbishop Whately on Bacon. 31 

my honour.' Swift's reply to Serjeant Bettesworth 
approached a shade nearer the fact : — 

Mr. Bettesworth, I was in my youth acquainted with great 
lawyers, who, knowing my disposition to satire, advised me, that 
if any scoundrel or blockhead whom I had lampooned should ask, 
' Are you the author of this paper ? ' I should tell him that I was 
not the author : and therefore I tell you, Mr. Bettesworth, 
that I am not the author of these lines. 

A writer in a recent Quarterly Review * appears to 
be for exact truth at all risks ; saying that the question 
really is, whether impertinence in one person will jus- 
tify falsehood in another ? and maintaining that, if the 
least departure from veracity is admitted in any instance, 
there is no saying where the thing will end. 

Archbishop Whately is reluctant to advise a depar- 
ture from truth in any case, but advises a method of 
meeting prying questioners which we trust reviewers 
will make use of on occasion. We quote the passage 
in which his advice occurs ; it is admirable for point 
and pungency : — 

A well-known author once received a letter from a peer with 
whom he was slightly acquainted, asking him whether he was 
the author of a certain article in the Edinburgh Review. He 
replied that he never made communications of that kind, except 
to intimate friends, selected by himself for the purpose, when 
he saw fit. His refusal to answer, however, pointed him out 
— which, as it happened, he did not care for — as the author. 
But a case might occur, in which the revelation of the author- 
ship might involve a friend in some serious difficulties. In any 
such case, he might have answered something in this style : * I 
have received a letter purporting to be from your lordship, but 

* Quarterly Review, vol. xcix. p. 302. 



3 2, Archbishop Wbately on Bac 



on, 



the matter of it induces me to suspect that it is a forgery by- 
some mischievous trickster. The writer asks whether I am 
the author of a certain article. It is a sort of question which 
no one has a right to ask ; and I think, therefore, that every- 
one is bound to discourage such enquiries by answering them 
— whether one is or is not the author — with a rebuke for ask- 
ing impertinent questions about private matters. I say " private," 
because, if an article be libellous or seditious, the law is open, 
and anyone may proceed against the publisher, and compel him 
either to give up the author, or to bear the penalty. If, again, 
it contains false statements, these, coming from an anonymous 
pen, may be simply contradicted. And if the arguments be 
unsound, the obvious course is to refute them. But <voho wrote 
it, is a question of idle or of mischievous curiosity, as it relates 
to the private concerns of an individual. 

* If I were to ask your lordship, " Do you spend your in- 
come ? or lay by ? or outrun ? Do you and your lady ever have 
an altercation ? Was she your first love ? or were you attached 
to some one else before ?" If I were to ask such questions, your 
lordship's answer would probably be, to desire the footman to 
show me out. Now, the present enquiry I regard as no less 
unjustifiable, and relating to private concerns: and, therefore, I 
think everyone bound, when so questioned, always, whether he 
is the author or not, to meet the enquiry with a rebuke. 

' Hoping that my conjecture is right, of the letter's being a 
forgery, I remain,' &c. 

In any case, however, in which a refusal to answer does not 
convey any information, the best way, perhaps, of meeting im- 
pertinent enquiries, is by saying, ' Can you keep a secret ?' and 
when the other answers that he can, you may reply, c Well, so 
can I.' — (pp. 68-9.) 

There are some admirable remarks, under the head 
of the Essay on ' Parents and Children,' upon the pro- 
priety of considering in what direction a boy's talents 
lie, in making choice of a profession for him. Too' 
frequently, when we speak of a boy's mind having a 



Archbishop Whately o?i Bacon. ^ 

bent to some particular course, it is understood that 
what is meant is, that he has an extraordinary genius 
for it. But it is to be remembered that 

numbers of men who would never attain any extraordinary 
eminence in anything, are yet so constituted as to make a very 
respectable figure in the department that is suited for them, and 
to fall below mediocrity in a different one. — (pp. 72-3.) „ 

Mr. Thackeray would be delighted with the short 
Annotations on the Essay ' Of Nobility.' It is in the 
nature of the Anglo-Saxon race to worship rank ; and 
when (as in the United States) rank is altogether 
ignored, the very violence of the reaction from the way 
in which things are done on this side of the Atlantic, 
indicates how resolute is the bent of the species in the 
contrary direction. It is the man who has a strong 
disposition to fall down at the feet of a duke, that is 
most likely to deny a duke, because he is one, the 
courtesy due to a man. We think that Archbishop 
Whately holds the balance very fairly between the two 
extremes : — 

In reference to nobility in individuals, nothing was ever 
better said than by Bishop Warburton — as is reported — in the 
House of Lords, on the occasion of some angry dispute which 
had arisen between a peer of noble family and one of a new 
creation. He said that, < high birth was a thing which he never 
knew anyone disparage, except those who had it not 5 and he 
never knew anyone make a boast of it who had anything else to 
be proud of.' 

It was a remark by a celebrated man, himself a gentleman 
born, but with nothing of nobility, that the difference between 
a man with a long line of noble ancestors, and an upstart, is that 
f the one knows for certain, what the other only conjectures at 

D 



34 Archbishop Whately on Bacon. 

highly probable, that several of his forefathers deserved hanging.' 
—(pp. 1 2 1-2.) 

In the Annotations on the Essay c Of Friendship,' 
the Archbishop puts down, by irresistible force of 
argument, one of the most silly, mischievous, pur- 
poseless, and groundless errors which have ever been 
taught : we mean the doctrine that in a future life, 
happy souls will be no longer capable of special indi- 
vidual friendship. We have often been filled with 
burning indignation at finding in the book of some 
empty-headed divine who never learned logic, or in the 
sermon of some popular preacher thoroughly devoid of 
sense, taste, scholarship, modesty, and the reasoning 
faculty, lengthy tirades about the perfection of another 
world consisting much in an entire elevation above such 
earthly things as specific attachments. We have seen 
and heard it stated that in a future life, blessed spirits 
will never remember or recognise those who were 
dearest to them in this : and perhaps, indeed, will not 
remember or recognise their own identity. It is satis- 
factory to know that this doctrine is as groundless as it 
is revolting : and most truly does Archbishop Whately 
say, that 

this is one of the many points in which views of the eternal 
state of the heirs of salvation are rendered more uninteresting to 
our feelings, and consequently, more uninviting, than there is 
any need to make them. 

There is much social wisdom in the remarks upon 
the Essay c Of Expense.' And here the Archbishop, 
in a graver tone, propounds a like philosophy to that 
which Mr. Thackeray has in several of his writings 



Archbishop Whately on Bacon. 35 

enforced so well. It would be hard to reckon up the 
misery and anxiety which are produced in this country 
by absurd and foolish straining to c keep up appear- 
ances : ' that is, with five hundred a year to entertain 
precisely like a man with five thousand, and generally 
to present a false face to the world, and seem other 
than what one is. When will this curse of our civi- 
lised life cease ? Surely, if people knew how trans- 
parent are all the pretences by which they think to pass 
for wealthy folk — how readily neighbours see through 
them — how incomparably more respectable and more 
respected is sterling yet unaffected honesty in this 
matter — this foolish display would cease, and the ana- 
logous forms of deception would cease with it. No 
one is taken in by them. Anyone who knows the 
world knows thoroughly how, by an accompanying 
process of mental arithmetic, to make the deductions 
from the big talk or the pretentious show of some 
people, which are needed to bring the appearance down 
to the reality. The greengrocer got in for the day is 
never mistaken for the family butler. The fly jobbed 
by the hour is easily distinguished from the brougham 
which it personates. And when Mr. Smith or Mrs. 
Jones talks largely of his or her aristocratic acquaint- 
ances, mentioning no name without ' a handle to it,' 
no one is for a moment misled into the belief that of 
such is the circle of society in which Mrs. Jones or 
Mr. Smith moves. 

In the Annotations on the c Regimen of Health,' 
there are some useful remarks upon early and late 
hours, and upon times of study, which we commend 



36 Archbishop Whately on Bacon. 

to the notice of hard-working college-men. And these 
remarks close with the following suggestive para- 
graph :— 

Of persons who have led a temperate life, those will have 
the best chance of longevity who have done hardly anything 
but live ; what may be called the neuter 'verbs — not active or 
passive, but only being : who have had but little to do, little 
to suffer ; but have led a life of quiet retirement, without ex- 
ertion of body or mind, — avoiding all .troublesome enterprise, 
and seeking only a comfortable obscurity. Such men, if of a 
pretty strong constitution, and if they escape any remarkable 
calamities, are likely to live long. But much affliction, or much 
exertion, and, still more, both combined, will be sure to tell 
upon the constitution — if not at once, yet at least as years 
advance. One who is of the character of an active or passive 
verb, or, still more, both combined, though he may be said to 
have lived long in everything but years, will rarely reach the age 
of the neuters. — (p. 305.) 

c It is better,' said Bishop Cumberland, c to wear out 
than to rust out : ' yet there can be no question that 
when the energies of body and mind are husbanded, 
they will go farther and last longer. Never to light 
the candle is the way to make it last for ever. Yet it 
may suffice the man who has crowded much living 
into a short life, to think that he has c lived long in 
everything but years.' 

We live in deeds, not years ; in thoughts, not breaths ; 
In feelings, not in figures on a dial. 
We should count time by heart-throbs. He most lives, 
Who thinks most, feels the noblest, acts the best,* 

* Bailey's Festus. 



Archbishop Whately on Bacon. gy 

In remarking on the Essay c Of Suspicion,' the 
Archbishop writes as follows :• — 

* Multitudes are haunted by the spectres, as it were, of 
vague surmises and indefinite suspicions, which continue thus to 
haunt them, just because they are vague and indefinite, — because 
the mind has never ventured to look them boldly in the face, and 
put them into a shape in which reason can examine them.' — 
(P-317-) 

A valuable practical lesson is to be drawn from the 
principle here laid down. Only experience can con- 
vince a man how wonderfully the mind's burden is 
lightened, by merely getting a clear view of what it 
has to do, or bear, or encounter. Some persons go 
through life in a ceaseless worry, oppressed and con- 
fused by an undefined feeling that they have a vast 
number and variety of things to do, and never feeling 
at rest or easy in their minds. If any man would just 
take a piece of paper and note down upon it what work 
he has to do, he will be surprised to find how much 
less formidable it will look ; not that it will necessarily 
look little, but that the killing thing — the vague sense 
of undefined magnitude, will be gone. So it is with 
troubles — so with doubts. If anyone who is possessed 
with the general impression that he is an extremely ill- 
used and unhappy man, would write down the special 
items of his troubles — even though the list should be 
of considerable length, he will find that matters are not 
so bad after all. There is nothing, we believe, that so 
aggravates all evil to the minds of most men, as when 
the sense of the vague, indeterminate, and innumerable, 
is added to it. And we are strong believers in the 



38 Archbishop Whately on Bacon. 

power of the pen to give most people clear and well- 
defined thoughts. 

We may particularise as especially worthy of atten- 
tion, Archbishop Whately's observations on the diffe- 
rent periods of life at which different men attain their 
mental maturity (pp. 403-4) ; on the license of counsel 
in pleading a client's cause (pp. 509-12); on the 
necessity of the forms and ceremonies of etiquette, 
even among the closest friends (p. 479) ; and upon 
the causes of sudden popularity (pp. 500-2). Students 
will find some valuable advice at pp. 460-1 ; and 
young preachers at pp. 323-4. Those persons who 
pretend an entire contempt for worldly wealth, either 
because the grapes hang beyond their reach, or from 
envy of people who are more fortunate, may turn with 
advantage to pp. 350-1. Those amiable individuals 
who are wont to express their satisfaction that such 
an acquaintance has met with some disappointment, 
because it will do him good, are referred to the Arch- 
bishop's keen and just remark upon such as bestow 
posthumous praise upon a man whom they reviled and 
calumniated during his life, and may profitably consider 
whether the real motive from which they speak is not 
highly analogous : — 

It may fairly be suspected that the one circumstance re- 
specting him which they secretly dwell on with the most 
satisfaction, though they do not mention it, is that he is dead; 
and that they delight in bestowing their posthumous honours 
on him, chiefly because they are posthumous ; according to the con- 
cluding couplet in the ' Verses on the Death of Dean Swift :' — 

' And since you dread 110 further lashes, 
Methinks you may forgive his ashes. 1 — (p. 19.) 



Archbishop Whately on Bacon, 39 

We must draw our remarks to a close. We feel 
how imperfect an idea we have given of Archbishop 
Whately's Annotations, — of their range, their cogency, 
their wisdom, their experience, their practical instruc- 
tion, their wit, their eloquence. The extracts we have 
quoted are like a sheaf of wheat brought from a field of 
a hundred acres ; but we trust our readers may be 
induced to study the book for themselves. 



4° 



II. 



RECENT METAPHYSICAL WORKS LEWES, MAURICE, 

FLEMING.* 

WE do not think, judging from the contempt in 
which Mr. Lewes holds the Scotch philosophical 
school, that he would concur in the common opinion 
that the Scotch are a metaphysical race. But we believe 
that Mr. Lewes would admit that a certain Scotch 
blacksmith, mentioned in Dr. Fleming's book, suc- 
ceeded in expressing in a pithy sentence the opinion as 
to metaphysical science which is accepted by the mass 
of mankind : — 

{ Twa folk,' said he, 'disputin' thegither ; he that's listenin' 
doesna ken what he that's speakin' means ; and he that's 
speakin' doesna ken what he means himsel', — that's meta- 
physics.' 

* The Biographical History of Philosophy, from its Origin in Greece down 
to the Present Day. By George Henry Lewes. London : 1857. 

Encyclopaedia Metropolitan a : Moral and Metaphysical Philosophy. Part I. 
Ancient Philosophy : Part II. Philosophy of the First Six Centuries : 
Part III. Mediaeval Philosophy. By Frederick Denison Maurice, M.A. 
London and Glasgow : 1854 — 1857. 

The Vocabulary of Philosophy ; Mental, Moral, and Metaphysical: ivith 
Quotations and References, for the use of Students. By William Fleming, 
D.D., Professor of Moral Philosophy in the University of Glasgow 
London and Glasgow : 1857. 



Recent Metaphysical Worh. 41 

The popular impression of metaphysics is of some- 
thing excessively uninteresting ; utterly away from all 
bearing on practical life, and for the most part quite 
unintelligible. The unintelligibility, so far as it exists, 
is mainly the fault of the authors who have written upon 
metaphysical subjects : the want of interest and of prac- 
tical concern is chargeable, we fear, upon the branch 
of science itself. Very .acute, very profound, and very 
subtle thought is of course more difficult to follow, than 
it is to take in and apprehend such a proposition as that 
the day is rainy, or that two and two make four ; and 
it is natural enough for ignorant persons to consider the 
difficulty of apprehending any thought as the measure 
of its subtlety, profundity, or acuteness ; and to think 
that the harder they find it to understand what an author 
would be at, the greater philosopher that author must 
be. It is but carrying out this notion to its legitimate 
conclusion, when many people judge, that if they find 
it utterly impossible to understand an author, it must 
be because he possesses powers greatly superior to those 
bestowed upon one whom they understand throughout, 
or by occasional glimpses. But we believe that in 
almost every instance in which men and women of 
ordinary intelligence and education find it difficult to 
make out an author's meaning, the fault lies entirely 
with the author himself. Either he himself has no clear 
notion of what he wishes to say, or he wants the power 
of saying it in intelligible words. In the case of meta- 
physical writings, we find many proofs that both these 
evils exist. Many metaphysical writers, it is evident, 
are groping their way through their subject as they 



42 Recent Metaphysical Works — 

proceed : they have no defined notion in their mind : 
they do not know what they want to express, and it is 
not at all surprising that they do not succeed in express- 
ing it. An author will generally present his thoughts 
to other minds, somewhat less sharply outlined than 
they exist in his own mind. And as if the essential 
difficulty of apprehending the impalpable and evanescent 
entities with which the metaphysician deals were not 
sufficient, many metaphysicians have employed a ter- 
minology so odd, affected, and unnatural, and a general 
style so intricate and involved, that it is not to be won- 
dered at if the great majority of readers throw aside 
their works in disgust. There has been of late years a 
healthy reaction from that blind admiration which for a 
time followed the intellectual c children of the mist.' 
The Archbishop of Dublin, in the preface to his recent 
edition of Bacon's Essays^ has remarked with his usual 
force and felicity upon the utterly undeserved influence 
which German theology and metaphysics for a con- 
siderable period exercised, and in some measure do 
still exercise, over many in this country ; — an influence 
founded mainly upon the belief that whatever is abstruse 
and recondite must be abstruse and recondite wisdom. 
It is not too much to say, that if many of the young 
persons who regard German thinking as much more 
profound than English, understood the true meaning (so 
far as there is any) of what they admire, they would 
discover that it consists partly of what is undoubtedly 
true but perfectly trivial ; and in greater part of what 
is flagrantly and absurdly false. 



Lewes, Maurice, Fleming. 43 

' It is pity/ we sometimes hear it said, e that such and such an 
author does not express in simple, intelligible, unaffected English 
such admirable matter as his.' They little think that it is the 
strangeness and obscurity of the style that make the power dis- 
played seem far greater than it is $ and that much of what they 
now admire as originality and profound wisdom, would appear, 
if translated into common language, mere commonplace matter. 
Many a work of this description may remind one of the sup- 
posed ancient shield which had been found by the antiquary 
Martinus Scriblerus, and which he highly prized, encrusted as it 
was with venerable rust. He mused on the splendid appearance 
it must have had in its bright newness ; till, one day, an over- 
sedulous house-maid having scoured off the rust, it turned out to 
be merely an old pot-lid.* 

We heartily wish that the Archbishop's words were 
impressed on the mind of every clever young under- 
graduate of every university in Britain. If a man 
writing English in England writes so as to be generally 
unintelligible, the simple inference in most cases should 
be, that he has not the command of his mother-tongue. 
And we think that such an instance as that of Arch- 
bishop Whately himself, who habitually treats the most 
recondite subjects with a crystalline clearness which 
makes the difficulty of following him, when it is difficult, 
that which arises from the severity of the thinking alone, 
must have tended powerfully to prove that there is no 
necessary connection between profundity of thought 
and unintelligibility of language. The last retreat of 
the theory that such a connection is essential, we believe 
to be among the bumpkins of many remote country 
parishes. They judge, that as a depth of the ocean is 
a point where the plummet finds no ground, so a deep 

* Archbishop Whately's Bacon, pp. viii-ix. 



44 Recent Metaphysical Works — 

sermon is one whose meaning they find it impossible to 
fathom. 

But apart from any obscurity in the style of a meta- 
physical writer, there is something in the essential 
nature of the subjects which he has to treat, that will 
always make them seem misty, vague, and unreal to 
the minds of most men. Nor would this difficulty be 
removed, even if the soundest sense and the strongest 
truth had always filled those philosophic pages which 
we know too well have been more frequently deformed 
by every kind of trifling, absurdity, and falsehood. 
Except as a mental discipline, we cannot conceive any- 
thing more thoroughly unprofitable than the attempt to 
become acquainted with the systems which those men 
to whom the name of philosopher has been accorded, 
have taught. A history of philosophic opinion is a his- 
tory of the vilest rubbish, the most childish nonsense, 
that ever proceeded from the mind of man. The 
common sense of mankind has consigned the greater 
part of it to contempt or oblivion. Whoever reads Mr. 
Lewes's careful account of much of the Greek philo- 
sophy, will probably hold, with Sydney Smith, that in 
those days common sense was not yet invented. But 
although it were otherwise, a science which treats of 
things which the eye cannot see nor the fingers grasp, 
must ever seem to the common mind to be engaged 
with things which have but a ghostly and unsubstantial 
existence. Even the strongest religious faith has to 
bewail that it falls so very far short of sight. Reality, 
in the impression of most men, is truly a quality of 
matter. Metaphysics, in its finest development, results 



Lewes, Maurice, Fleming, 45 

to actual sense in the appearance of a thoughtful and 
careworn man, who is, physically, probably far below 
the average of his fellows ; or in a book, full indeed of 
sharp and profound processes and results of thought, 
and setting forth much that is elevating and noble. 
But to sight that is all. It ends there. To the sense 
of any man the result is small ; nor does it probably 
appear great to the appreciation of more than one man 
in a hundred thousand. But in the case of physical 
science we have all the acute thought, the bold gene- 
ralisation, the happy inference : and then the locomotive 
steam-engine or the Menai-bridge as the visible and 
tangible result. And the locomotive steam-engine or 
the Menai-bridge is what every man can touch and see. 
What wonder, then, if, in a practical age, men should 
say, c Give us the facts and realities of science, not the 
dreams of metaphysics I That is the true philosophy 
which carries us sixty miles in the hour — which places 
on our breakfast table the letter written, since the sun 
went down, five hundred miles off — which provides 
warm and cheerful houses to live in — and which, as 
Bacon would have said, commodls humanis inservit.' 

We have before us three recent works upon the 
entire field of metaphysics, each with a strongly-marked 
individuality of its own. 

Mr. Lewes's book, although only a new edition of a 
former publication, is so much altered and extended as 
to be virtually a new work. Although it bears the title 
of a Biographical History of Philosophy , it combines, in 
tolerably equal amount, biography, exposition, and 
criticism. We have the lives, not by any means of all 



46 Recent Metaphysical Works — 

eminent philosophers, but of a representative man of 
each school. Then we have a view of the peculiar 
tenets of each school, given for the most part with 
scrupulous fairness, and not stated at second-hand, but 
derived by Mr. Lewes himself from the writings of the 
most eminent authors of each. But Mr. Lewes has 
not set himself to exhibit a full system of the opinions 
taught by each philosopher or each school. Adopting 
heartily the view expressed in the lines of Tennyson, 
which he has taken as a motto : — 



For I doubt not through the ages one increasing purpose 

runs, 
And the thoughts of men are widened by the process of the 



suns, 



he has rather sought to show how thought and opinion 
were developed from age to age, each new thinker 
taking a further step, though not always a step in 
advance. He has confined himself mainly to that in 
each philosopher which was his peculiar contribution 
to the great sum of human thought and conclusion, and 
tried to show that philosophy ran a regular course, each 
new view being a development of, or a consequence 
from, or a reaction from, that which went before. A 
distinctive characteristic of Mr. Lewes's work is, that 
it is written to prove that philosophy, properly so called, 
is impossible. It is a curious thing to find a history of 
metaphysics laboriously produced by an author who 
avows his belief in the utter futility of metaphysics, and 
who denies even the superior grandeur of the specula- 
tions through which that misty science leads. Most 



Lewes, Maurice, Fleming. 47 

men, whether speaking or writing, are wont to begin a 
discussion of any subject by maintaining its vast im- 
portance and utility : Mr. Lewes writes his book to show 
that his subject is of no importance or utility at all. 
Any interest which philosophy may still retain, he 
holds to be purely historical. It is still interesting for 
us, standing amid the certainties of science, to look 
back upon the past wanderings and struggles of the 
human mind and the human race. But now we have 
got out of the wood ; we have climbed the hill. 
Philosophy has abdicated in favour of physical science ; 
the only philosophy which survives is Positivism ; which 
merely notes phenomena, and believes nothing but 
what it sees. The steps of the course in which 
Mr. Lewes holds that human reason has advanced, 
retrograded, and deviated, till it ended in this, we shall 
hereafter consider ; and of the grounds on which his 
ultimate principle rests we have something to say. 
Meanwhile we quote Mr. Lewes's own words : — 

The purport of this history is to show how and why the 
interest in philosophy has become purely historical. In this 
purport lies the principal novelty of the work. There is no 
other history of philosophy written by one disbelieving in the 
possibility of metaphysical certitude. 

Mr. Lewes holds that there is no certainty in 
metaphysics ; that philosophy's day is over ; that it 
served a great end in raising mankind from ignorance 
and apathy, and awakening the thirst for knowledge ; 
and that now it is needed no more. We have got 
beyond it. It belongs to the discipline of an earlier 



48 Recent Metaphysical Works — 

period in the progress of the race. It is now the day 
of physics. 

If our history (says Mr. Lewes) has any value, it is in the 
emphatic sanction which it gives to the growing neglect of 
philosophy, the growing preference for science. 

Such is the great principle which Mr. Lewes 
maintains in his book ; and he maintains it with 
great ingenuity and force ; and brings to its support 
very extensive stores of information. If his book 
be a heavy one, the fault is not the author's, but 
the subject's. Lively illustration, and picturesque 
narrative and description, have done their utmost to 
enliven the work. And there is something quite 
refreshing in the clearness of Mr. Lewes's conceptions 
and the transparency of his style. One may differ 
from the opinion which he expresses ; but one is never 
in difficulty to know what he means. We cannot 
pretend to be able to judge throughout ; but in so far 
as we can judge, the treatment of the subject is 
laboriously conscientious. There is a floating tradition 
of stock impressions of the peculiar tenets of most 
eminent philosophers ; and these are in many cases 
very inaccurate and inexact. But Mr. Lewes has not 
been content merely to repeat the old story as to what 
Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Hobbes, Leibnitz, or Spinoza 
thought. He has studied the works of the great meta- 
physicians for himself; and where his statements of 
their doctrines are not thus made expressly at first hand, 
he has not been content to receive the traditional im- 
pression without at least verifying it by reference to the 
original. Anyone v/ho has ever been conversant with 



Lewes, Maurice, Fleming. 49 

metaphysical study, cannot fail to regard with respect a 
book to whose composition so great an amount of hard 
work must have gone. Some indication of this is given 
incidentally in a note upon the section devoted to the 
method of Plato. Mr. Lewes mentions in it that 
previously to writing that section, he renewed his 
acquaintance with Plato by carefully reading all his 
works^ with the exception of two of the minor ones. 
We feel that a book which at each successive step is 
founded upon information so extensive and accurate, is 
not one for hasty and flippant criticism. And while 
we thank Mr. Lewes sincerely for restoring to deflnite- 
ness much knowledge which was growing misty in our 
memory ; and while we appreciate highly his acuteness 
of logic, and his subtlety of thought, as well as his 
lively and attractive style ; we shall seek to combat the 
great principle on which he finally rests ; and to show 
that it either leads to consequences the most melancholy, 
or virtually coincides with the leading doctrine of a 
school which Mr. Lewes holds, we cannot but think, 
in most undeserved depreciation. 

Mr. Maurice's volumes form part of the new edition 
of the Encyclopedia Metropolitana. Like Mr. Lewes, 
he has aimed at producing a historical rather than a 
didactic work; and like Mr. Lewes, he has written 
rather for popular perusal than for the study of the 
learned. He says in his general preface : — 

Leaving the student to seek for a formal and regular account 
of systems in the many French or German works which profess 
to furnish one, I have contented myself with offering him a few 
hints which might help him in examining the purpose of the 

E 



50 Recent Metaphysical Works — ■ 

most conspicuous teachers ; in reading their books, when they 
had left any ; in connecting them with the country or the age 
wherein they flourished. . . . My remarks could not be a 
substitute for the reflections of the reader, or for an examination 
of the original sources ; they might lead, I hoped, to both. 

Mr. Maurice's work remains as yet incomplete. 
Although three volumes of it have appeared, not 
indeed large volumes, but printed in a type so small as 
to have a deterring effect upon any but young and 
unworn eyes, he has got no further down than the end 
of the thirteenth century. Differing essentially, as we 
shall see, from Mr. Lewes in the great principle on 
which his work is founded, Mr. Maurice has likewise 
adopted a plan of treating his subject which varies 
materially from the plan of Mr. Lewes in many points 
of detail. Thus Mr. Maurice's first volume, which is 
given to Ancient Philosophy, contains some account of 
the philosophy of the Hebrews, Egyptians, Hindoos, 
Chinese, and Persians : Mr. Lewes, for reasons too 
long to state, has omitted from his book any description 
of the metaphysics of the East. Mr. Maurice, in the 
same volume, gives a brief account of the philosophy 
of Rome ; while Mr. Lewes, holding that Rome never 
had a philosophy of its own, having added no new idea 
to those which it borrowed from Greece, holds that 
Rome is entitled to no mention in a work intended to 
exhibit the development of philosophical thought. Mr. 
Maurice traces ancient philosophy through its Oriental, 
Grecian, Roman, and Alexandrian development : Mr. 
Lewes holds that all ancient philosophy, properly so 
called, was confined to Greece ; and that when phi- 



Lewes, Maurice, Fleming, 51 

losophy appeared in the Alexandrian schools, it was no 
longer philosophy pure, but philosophy adulterated with 
Yeligion or faith. From Alexandria, the end of the 
ancient philosophy, Mr. Lewes goes by one great step 
to Bacon, the founder of the modern ; holding the long 
interval from Proclus to Bacon as a mere period of 
transition, to which he has given attention enough 
when he has placed in it, as stepping-stones, the names 
of Abelard, Algazzali, and Giordano Bruno. Mr. 
Maurice, on the other hand, has devoted the second 
and third volumes of his work to the period over which 
Mr. Lewes passes so lightly 5 the second volume 
treating of the philosophy of the first six centuries, and 
the third, of the philosophy of the time from the fifth 
century to the fourteenth. Mr. Maurice is therefore 
still fighting his way through the teachings of the 
middle ages : Albertus Magnus, Thomas Aquinas, and 
the Franciscans, being the latest philosophers of whom 
he has treated. 

The essential antagonism of the principles on which 
Mr. Maurice and Mr. Lewes have written their re- 
spective works, may account in a considerable degree 
for the modes of treatment which they have respectively 
adopted. Mr. Lewes's great principle is, that philo- 
sophy is useless \ that it has not, nor ever had, any 
life in it : and he expounds and criticises the views of 
each successive representative writer or teacher, to 
show how futile and useless they were ; till at length, 
in the positivism of Auguste Comte, he sees with ap- 
proval, philosophy finally yielding the field to physical 
science. Mr. Maurice, on the contrary, holds that all 



52 Recent Metaphysical Works — 

men in all ages have had a divine teacher, whether they 
have followed his guiding or not ; and so, by implica- 
tion, that amid all its wanderings and follies, there has 
ever been in philosophy a certain measure of divine 
truth. In a different sense of the phrase, Mr. Maurice 
would sympathise with Mr. Morell, who avows himself 
a believer in philosophy. And it is easy to understand 
how, to a man of so earnest and sincere a spirit as Mr. 
Maurice, such a reflection must throw a solemnity and 
sanctity about the wildest fancies of the metaphysician, 
groping, under unconscious and halt-regarded guidance, 
after eternal truth. Holding the principle which he 
holds, Mr. Maurice cannot think it wasted time that 
is given even to the tracing of the views of semi- 
barbarous lands, or the aimless subtleties of mediaeval 
thinkers. He may see in them much to wonder at, 
much to disapprove, but assuredly nothing to laugh 
at. And we can well understand how carefully Mr. 
Maurice will shrink from the farthest risk of in any 
degree misrepresenting what men, earnestly seeking 
truth, and seeking it under such guidance as that in 
which he believes, have at any time been able to 
attain to. 

Mr. Maurice occupies a position which is so well 
understood by those to whom his influence extends, 
and his characteristics, both of thought and language, 
are so marked, that it is almost presumptuous to ex- 
press any opinion of him which in any degree differs 
from the received impression. His intense honesty 
and guileless sincerity of purpose give a charm to all 
he does ; nor is his influence over young men, over 



Lewes, Maurice, Fleming, 53 

whom it is very great, likely to be lessened by what 
appear to us the facts, that he is occasionally earnest 
to a degree in which earnestness passes into impracti- 
cability: that as a guide he is sometimes not a little 
unsafe ; and that oftentimes his style is such as to 
tantalise us with the expectation of something which 
does not come to us in such a shape that we can grasp 
and hold it. We think — it is but our opinion — that 
Mr. Maurice, in all his writings, is sometimes struggling 
to express views which are present to his own mind in 
a very undefined form. Still, no one can open these 
volumes, at almost any page, without happening upon 
passages full of a quiet and thoughtful beauty which 
is peculiarly Mr. Maurice's own ; and whoever shall 
carefully peruse the work so far as it has gone, will 
certainly rise from the reading of it with no ordinary 
feeling of affection towards his guide. 

We do not know whether it proceeds from a pre- 
judice of early training ; but we confess that from Mr. 
Maurice, and even from Mr. Lewes, we turn with a 
feeling of refreshment to Dr. Fleming's book. Scotch 
philosophy may not be subtle ; but it is always intel- 
ligible. Some would probably deny that it is entitled 
to be called philosophy at all 3 but it is at least sound, 
homely sense, about important subjects, expressed in 
clear and comprehensible language. De Ouincey has 
expressed his opinion, that of all writers with whom 
he is or was acquainted, English poets possess the most 
of the analytic faculty, and Scotch professors the least : 
but one thing may at all events be said to the praise of 



54 Recent Metaphysical Works — 

most Scotch professors of philosophy; namely, that if 
one of them states to us what are his opinions upon 
any point whatever, any person of ordinary intelligence 
will always know exactly what the professor means. 

Dr. Fleming is the eloquent and accomplished Pro- 
fessor of Moral Philosophy in the University of Glas- 
gow. He has filled his chair for more than twenty 
years ; but as he has confined his energies entirely to 
the assiduous discharge of his academic duties, he is by 
no means so widely known as his attainments and 
genius entitle him to be. A Scotch professor of philo- 
sophy is expected to read the same course of lectures 
session after session ; so that when his course of lec- 
tures has been completed, he may enjoy comparative 
leisure. But to compose a course of about a hundred 
and twenty lectures, each occupying an hour in the 
reading, and together forming an elaborate system of 
metaphysics, ethics, and natural theology, is a task de- 
manding not only very great information and great 
industry, but very considerable time. The session at 
Glasgow College lasts from the first of November to 
the first of May; and during these six months, Dr. 
Fleming lectures six days a week. His lectures having 
been fully composed, he has for some years had leisure 
for literary work during the long summer vacation of 
six months ; and he has lately given to the world his 
first considerable work, in the form of a Vocabulary of 
Philosophy ; Mental, Moral, and Metaphysical. We 
might have expected from Dr. Fleming a more ambi- 
tious work ; but holding, in the words of one of the 
mottoes prefixed to his book, that ' a good dictionary 



Lewes, Maurice, Fleming, 55 

is the best metaphysical treatise,' he has been content 
to cast his contribution to philosophical literature in 
this laborious form. We find abundant evidence of 
the great extent and accuracy of his knowledge of 
philosophy ; but of course a work like this affords no 
field for the display of that brilliant and pathetic elo- 
quence, sullied by just the suspicion of a tendency to 
the tawdry and turgid, which makes him one of the 
most striking and attractive academic lecturers of the 
day. His sound sense, and complete freedom from 
extravagance and crotchets ; his comprehensive me-- 
thod and his lucid style ; render him an admirable 
teacher of his favourite science ; and the moral philo- 
sophy class-room in the venerable College of Glasgow 
is always crowded by an enthusiastic auditory. 

Although Dr. Fleming does not formally push for- 
ward his own philosophic views, we may collect from 
his book that he is generally a disciple of his great 
predecessor, Dr. Reid, the acknowledged head of the 
Scotch, or common-sense school in metaphysics. 
While Dr. Fleming would probably admit that the 
philosophy of the Unseen can never, for the practical 
purposes of daily life, rival in the general estimation 
the philosophy of the Material, he would still maintain 
that metaphysical philosophy possesses more than a 
historical interest and importance. And while Mr. 
Lewes is stopped upon the threshold, by finding that 
we have no satisfactory evidence on which to found a 
science of ontology, and so maintains that all philosophy 
is impossible ; the Scotch school, on common-sense 
principles, assumes Being as a fact not admitting of 



56 Recent Metaphysical Works — 

metaphysical proof, but just as little admitting of denial; 
and having thus found a basis, proceeds to the investi- 
gation of mental phenomena, of moral obligations and 
distinctions, of motives and impulses to act, and of the 
great truths of natural theology and revealed religion. 
The Scotch school has alone been successful in point- 
ing out the way in which philosophy may be saved 
from passing into universal scepticism ; and no one 
grants more readily than the leaders of that school are 
ready to do, that its aliquid impercussum is furnished by 
common-sense rather than by metaphysics. But we 
are anticipating what is to come hereafter. 

A dictionary is not usually very interesting reading ; 
but Dr. Fleming's dictionary may be read with great 
interest. And although the alphabetical arrangement 
of the Vocabulary necessarily makes its treatment of a 
cluster of cognate subjects fragmentary, any reader 
who will follow out the references to other words 
which Dr. Fleming gives under each important term, 
may thus piece together for himself a clear and com- 
prehensive treatise upon almost any philosophical sub- 
ject. We can well believe the statement in the 
preface, that the labour of producing such a work c has 
been greater than the result can indicate or measure.' 
And we know of no book more suitable to place in 
the hands of a young student at his entrance upon 
metaphysical science. 

We have already stated that Mr. Lewes holds that 
metaphysical speculation has run an orderly course ; 
not indeed a course in advance, but one in which time 



Lewes, Maurice, Fleming. 57 

after time the effort has been made to grapple with the 
mystery of existence, and time after time the effort 
has been found vain, the enquirer has thrown up his 
investigations as impossible, and the human mind has 
sunk down into total scepticism ; in a little while, 
indeed, to rise up again with renewed energies, and to 
struggle through the same weary round again, with the 
same heartless result. It was not the individual man 
who completed that circle ; individual men have lived 
and died representing each point in it ; but such, Mr. 
Lewes holds, has been the ' increasing purpose ' 
developed through ages, and such the process of the 
human race. Philosophy began in Greece : Thales is 
justly regarded as the father of Greek speculation. It 
was an epoch when a man was found who lifted up his 
mind from the details of material life, and enquired 
about something not pressed upon him by daily neces- 
sities. The first speculation was concerning the nature 
of the universe ; and Mr. Lewes has sought with much 
ingenuity to remove from the fragmentary tenets of 
Thales, Anaximenes, and other representative men, 
the air of downright folly and absurdity which at the 
first glance they wear. Thales, for instance, taught 
that l the principle of all things was water.' At the 
first sight, the lesson appears merely silly. But Mr. 
Lewes, seeking to read into it, has discovered in it a 
germ of sense which Thales himself probably hardly 
perceived. Here is Mr. Lewes's interpretation of the 
enigma of Thales : — 

Thales felt that there was a vital question to be answered rela- 
tive to the beginning of things. He looked around him 5 and the 



58 Recent Metaphysical Works — 

result of his meditation was the conviction that moisture was the 
beginning. 

He was impressed with this idea by examining the constitu- 
tion of the earth. There also he found moisture everywhere. 
All things he found nourished by moisture ; warmth itself he 
declared to proceed from moisture ; the seeds of all things are 
moist. Water when condensed becomes earth. Thus convinced 
of the universal presence of water, he declared it to be the 
beginning of all things. 

Thales would all the more readily adopt this notion, from its 
harmonising with ancient opinions : such, for instance, as those 
expressed in Hesiod's theogony, wherein Oceanus and Thetis are 
regarded as the parents of all such deities as had any relation to 
nature. 

The first epoch of philosophical speculation, accord- 
ing to Mr. Lewes, was that in which men sought to 
discover something as to the nature of the universe. 
The speculators of that epoch were of three different 
classes : the Physicists, the Mathematicians, and the 
Eleatics. Then followed an epoch in which such men 
as Heraclitus, Anaxagoras, Empedocles, and Demo- 
critus, speculated upon the creation of the universe, and 
the origin of knowledge. Then came an intellectual 
crisis : thoughtful men felt that all the attempts which 
had been made to solve the problem of existence and 
of knowledge, were futile ; and hence came the Sophists. 
Then Socrates invented and taught his new method ; a 
fresh era was thus opened ; and it was continued when 
the Socratic method was partially adopted by the Me- 
garic school, the Cyrenaic, and the Cynic, and com- 
pletely adopted and applied by Plato. The Socratic 
period closed with Aristotle. Socrates had appeared in 
a time of utter scepticism : he introduced a new 



Lewes, Maurice, Fleming. $g 

method, and pointed men to ethics, instead of bewilder- 
ing speculations about physical nature. Aristotle led 
the world again to speculation ; he brought philosophy- 
back to the point where Socrates had found it. 

A second crisis followed, under the same laws as the 
first. The Sceptics, the Epicureans, the Stoics, and 
the New Academy arose. All these schools were 
essentially sceptical ; and scepticism protested against 
all philosophy. Mr. Lewes thus sums up the result : — 

The struggles of so many men, from Thales, who first 
asked himself, whence do all things proceed ? to the elaborate 
systematisation of the forms of thought which occupied an 
Aristotle — the struggles of all these men had ended in scep- 
ticism. Little was to be gleaned from the harvest of their en- 
deavours but arguments against the possibility of that philosophy 
which they were so anxious to form. Centuries of thought had 
not advanced the mind one step nearer to a solution of the pro- 
blems with which, child- like, it began. It began with a child- 
like question ; it ended with an aged doubt. Not only did it 
doubt the solutions of the great problem which others had 
attempted, it even doubted the possibility of any solution. It 
was not the doubt which begins, but the doubt which ends 
enquiry ; it had no illusions. 

Reason had now but one recourse ; it allied itself 
with faith, and Alexandria was the theatre of the great 
effort to construct a religious philosophy. Neo-Pla- 
tonism arose ; then Neo-Platonism was felt to be 
antagonistic to Christianity. The Alexandrian school 
was finally defeated with Proclus : — 

With Proclus the Alexandrian school expired ; with him 
philosophy ceased. Religion, and religion alone, seemed capa- 
ble of affording satisfactory answers to the questions which 



60 Recent Metaphysical Works — 

perplexed the human race ; and philosophy was reduced to the 
subordinate office which the Alexandrians had consigned to the 
Aristotelian logic. Philosophy became the servant of religion, 
no longer reigning in its own right. 

Thus was the circle of endeavour completed. With Thales, 
reason separated itself from faith 5 with the Alexandrians, the 
two were again united. The centuries between these epochs 
were filled with helpless struggles to overcome an insuperable 
difficulty. 

We have already stated that Mr. Lewes, holding that 
the ancient philosophy ended with Proclus, and the 
modern began with Bacon, has contented himself with 
interposing three stepping-stones in the long space 
between, in the names of Abelard, Algazzali, and 
Giordano Bruno. The first epoch in the modern 
philosophy was the foundation of the inductive method, 
with which, of course, Mr. Lewes couples the name of 
Bacon. The second epoch was the foundation of the 
deductive method, associated with the name of Des- 
cartes. Spinoza brought about the first intellectual 
crisis in the modern philosophy ; ontology gave way to 
psychology. It was now felt that knowledge dependent 
on experience must necessarily be merely knowledge of 
phenomena. Experience could only mean experience of 
ourselves as modified by objects. To know things 
per se, that is, what are called noumena in opposition to 
phenomena, we must know them through some other 
channel than experience. And psychology was studied 
in order to find an answer to the question, Have we 
ideas independent of experience ? We know outward 
things relatively ; that is, as they transmit to us, through 
the media of sense, their pictures and ideas : but can 



Lewes, Maurice, Fleming. 61 

we know things absolutely ; — that is, as they are in 
themselves, though there were no eye to see them, no 
fingers to touch them, no ear to hear them ? 

Thus Mr. Lewes's third epoch is that of Hobbes, 
Locke, and Leibnitz. And Mr. Lewes holds that 
Locke brought things to a point which demonstrated 
the impossibility of philosophy : inasmuch as he showed 
that all knowledge is derived from experience, in its two 
forms of sensation and reflection; and so that we know 
things only relatively, not absolutely. Mr. Lewes, it 
will be observed, throughout his work identifies 
philosophy with ontology ; and while most men will 
admit that ontology is impossible, few, we believe, will 
agree with him in thinking that this of necessity implies 
the impossibility of all metaphysics. From Locke's 
system there proceeded three distinct systems ; the 
admitted fact that knowledge is subjective, resulted in 
the idealism of Berkeley, the scepticism of Hume, and 
the sensationalism of Condillac. Then came a crisis : 
it was the reaction of common sense. Dr. Reid, the 
head of the Scotch school, held, that although we can- 
not justly be said to pass beyond the limits of con- 
sciousness, and so cannot be said precisely to know things 
per se, still we cannot choose but believe that things 
are in themselves what they seem to us. We cannot 
possibly doubt that sense transmits to us an account 
of the external world, which is accurate so far as it 
goes. And we believe this, just because the common 
consent of mankind has decided the question. Kant, 
anxious to have data of a more purely philosophical 
character to found upon, sought them in a critical 



63 Recent Metaphysical Works — 

examination of the reason itself. But as Kant admitted 
that we know things only relatively — only, that is, as 
by the make of our mind we are constrained to know 
them — idealism again emerged, as exemplified in the 
views of Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel. In a following 
epoch, a strong reaction, there came a desire to find in 
physiology a basis for psychology : hence came phreno- 
logy. And finally, philosophy relinquished its place in 
favour of positive science. Eclecticism, indeed, pre- 
tended to select what was true from among the many 
systems of mingled truth and error ; but who was to 
decide what was true and what was false ? If a man 
does not know chaff from wheat, how is he to separate 
the two ? Finally, as Mr. Lewes holds, comes Auguste 
Comte. All we have now to do is to observe and 
classify laws : that is, the ways in which phenomena 
succeed phenomena. We know nothing of essence, 
nothing of causes ; one thing we know, that such a 
thing always follows such another thing. And Mr. 
Lewes thinks that the day is not distant when the 
Positive method will be universally accepted, c at least 
among the elite of humanity.' 

In the conclusion of his work, Mr. Lewes thus sums 
up the course which philosophy has run : — 

After the Eleatics had vexed the problem of existence to no 
purpose, then came Democritus, Anaxagoras, Plato, and Aris- 
totle, who endeavoured to settle the problems of the nature and 
origin of human knowledge. So in modern times, after Des- 
cartes and Spinoza, came Hobbes, Locke, Leibnitz, Reid, and 
Kant. The ancient researches into the origin of knowledge, 
ended in the Sceptics, the Stoics, and the New Academy : that 
is to say, in scepticism, common sense, and scepticism again. 
The modern researches ended in Berkeley, Hume, Reid, and Kant ; 



Lewes, Maurice, Fleming. 63 

that is, in idealism, scepticism, common sense, and scepticism again. 
These enquiries terminating thus fruitlessly, a new and desperate 
spring was made in Alexandria ; reason was given up for ecstasy ; 
philosophy merged itself in religion. In Germany a similar 
spectacle presents itself. Schelling identified philosophy with 
religion. Thus has philosophy completed its circle, and we are 
left in this nineteenth century precisely at the same point at which 
we were in the fifth. 

Such is the course which philosophy has run. Let 
us select from another part of Mr. Lewes's book 
Comte's view of what it has ended in : — 

Humanity has three stages — the theological, the metaphysical, 
and the positive. Whether we examine the history of nations, 
of individuals, or of special sciences, we find that speculation 
always commences with supernatural explanations, advances to 
metaphysical explanations, and finally reposes in positive explana- 
tions. The first is the necessary point of departure taken by 
human intelligence ; the second is merely a stage of transition 
from the supernatural to the positive ; and the third is the fixed 
and definite condition in which knowledge is alone capable of 
progressive development. 

In the theological stage the mind regards all effects as the 
productions of supernatural agents, whose intervention is the 
cause of all the apparent anomalies and irregularities. Nature 
is animated by supernatural beings. Every unusual phenomenon 
is a sign of the pleasure or displeasure of some being adored 
and propitiated as a god. The lowest condition of this stage is 
that of the savages, viz., Fetishism. The highest condition is 
when one being is substituted for many, as the cause of all 
phenomena. 

In the metaphysical stage, which is only a modification ofthe 
former, but which is important as a transitional stage, the super- 
natural agents give place to abstract forces (personified abstrac- 
tions), supposed to inhere in the various substances, and capable 
themselves of engendering phenomena. The highest condition 
of this stage is when all these forces are brought under one general 
force, named Nature. 



64 Recent Metaphysical Works — 

In the positive stage the mind, convinced of the futility of all 
enquiry into causes and essences, applies itself to the observation 
and classification of laws which regulate effects : that is to say, 
the invariable relations of succession and similitude which all 
things bear to each other. The highest condition of this stage 
would be, to be able to represent all phenomena as the various 
particulars of one general view. 

These three stages do not always occur in strictly- 
chronological order. Some sciences arrive more rapidly 
than others at the positive stage. Astronomy, for 
example, is now in so positive a condition, that we need 
nothing but the laws of dynamics and gravitation to 
explain all celestial phenomena : and we know that our 
explanation is correct, so far as we can know anything, 
because we can calculate and predict the fact as it 
actually falls out, — we can, for example, calculate the 
season of a comet's return, and fix accurately at the 
year's beginning when the sun will rise upon each day 
throughout its course. But meteorology is not yet in 
the positive stage, and so people are still found to pray 
for rain or fair weather : whereas, once the laws of 
meteorology settled, men would not pray for rain any 
more than they would pray that the sun might rise at 
midnight. If rain is to come, it will come ; and no 
supernatural power, so far as we have reason to think, 
will intermeddle in the matter. And the same man 
may have attained to the positive stage in one science, 
while he has only reached the metaphysical in another, 
and is groping in the theological in a third. Mr. Lewes 
says : — 

The same man who in physics may be said to have arrived at 
the positive stage, and who recognises no other object of enquiry 



Lewes } Maurice, Fleming. 65 

than the laws of phenomena, will be found still a slave to the 
metaphysical stage in biology, and endeavouring to detect the 
cause of life, and so little emancipated from the supernatural 
stage in sociology, that if you talk to him of the possibility of a 
science of history, or a social science, he will laugh at you as a 
1 theorizer.' 

Such, then, is the Positive philosophy ; if indeed, we 
may so term a system which denies the possibility of 
any philosophy at all. It watches, it observes, it notes 
down, it does not pretend to explain. But it does more 
than merely pretermit explanation. If it did no more 
than thatj it would simply be the philosophy of induc- 
tion and generalisation, under another name. But it 
denies the possibility of explanation. It holds it folly 
to attempt explanation. It believes what it sees ; but 
it goes further, and believes nothing which it does not 
see. It is nothing new to tell us that in metaphysical 
as in material science we must proceed by the method 
of induction, by observing phenomena, noting them, 
and classifying them. The essential characteristic of 
Positivism is rather in what it forbids than in what it 
commands. It says to us, observe, note, classify, and 
stop there. Do not reason or infer from what you 
see. And it is on the stop there that Positivism lays the 
emphasis. It is because this is well understood, that 
Positivism is regarded with suspicion. It is because 
this is so, that Positivism is dangerous. Either the 
stop there is not the differentia of Positivism — and then it 
is a system of sulky submission to the old logic of 
induction and the Scotch school of common sense : or 
the stop there is the differentia of Positivism — and then 

F 



66 Recent Metaphysical Works — 

let a man clearly understand, before he receives it, how 
much it bids him stop short of. 

For it is only too plain, that Positivism bids us stop 
short of all theology, of all religion, perhaps of all 
morality. Positivism is Atheism. Not that it expressly 
says, ' There is no God :' but that it shakes its head 
when a Deity is mentioned, and says, c I know nothing 
at all about that.' It says, ' I see phenomena succeeding 
other phenomena ; but I do not ask, and I do not know, 
why. That is beyond my sphere : and it is beyond my 
sphere, because it is beyond the sphere to which the hu- 
man mind is limited. You say that law can do nothing ; 
that it simply is the mode in which a real agent must be 
working. I have nothing to say about that ; and I 
advise you to have nothing to do with it either. Keep 
to what you can see. What cannot be seen, may be 5 
or may not be. I do not pretend to know which 
alternative is right, but my inclination is towards the 
latter.' 

Such is the real teaching of the Positivism of the pre- 
sent day. Not that we for a moment suggest that Mr. 
Lewes is prepared to go that length. We know too 
well how men wedded to any principle whatever, will 
shake themselves free of consequences from that prin- 
ciple which all but themselves discern to be inevitable. 
We infer nothing as to Mr. Lewes's ulterior belief, 
from the doctrine which he holds in philosophy. For 
anything we can certainly learn from his speculative 
metaphysics, he may be the sternest of moralists and 
the most enthusiastic of religionists. All we say is, 
that as it appears to us, Positivism either means nothing, 



Lewes, Maurice, Fleming. 67 

or it means Atheism. It is either assenting with a 
growl of dissatisfaction to the philosophy of common 
sense — and although many Positivists express them- 
selves in guarded terms which virtually mean this, we 
do not believe that the leaders of the school would have 
ushered in as a grand discovery what really amounts to 
nothing, — or the negative side of Positivism is its true 
and characteristic one ; and then it necessarily results in 
that development to which we know most Positivists 
have avowedly pushed it — of total scepticism in religion ; 
of Atheism, or non-Theism, if the word be preferred ; 
and of what is called by its adherents Secularism, or an 
entire and exclusive devotion to the interests of a pre- 
sent life. The principle on which Mr. Holyoake and 
the members of his school proceed, in professedly con- 
fining their thoughts and endeavours to the visible 
world, is not by any means that they assuredly believe 
that there is no world beyond the grave. The Secu- 
larist and Positivist admits that there may be another 
world : all he says is, ' I have no proof that there is 
another world ; I am quite sure that there is a present 
world : and I shall hold by that of which I am sure.' 
That is accurate and legitimate Positivism. For Positiv- 
ism simply means to keep to what you certainly know ; 
and as for all things else, to pass them by and let them 
alone. The Secularist does not say for certain that 
there is no God and no immortality. He says there 
may be, for what he knows. Perhaps there is a God. 
Perhaps the soul is immortal. But he has no direct 
sensible proof that it is so : and so, on the Positive 



68 Recent Metaphysical Works — 

principle, he pretermits all consideration of that of which 
he is not absolutely sure. 

And now the question arises — Is it really necessary, 
as Mr. Lewes maintains, to have recourse to Positivism ? 
Is there no way of escaping the alternative, so plausible 
in its first statement, so dismal in its results ? Is the 
obstacle which meets us at the very threshold of philo- 
sophy so impassable that we must sit down before it in 
despair, and renounce all hope of ever knowing anything 
beyond ? Let us now carefully look at the obstacle, 
and see whether it must indeed finally stop us. Perhaps 
the flank of the opposing force may be turned by German 
subtlety. Perhaps the Gordian knot may be severed 
by Scotch common sense. 

We are anxious, in what follows, to appeal to readers 
not sophisticated in metaphysics ; and we shall do our 
best to make the state of the question plain. 

The great stumbling-block, then, which, Mr. Lewes 
maintains, makes metaphysical certitude impossible, is 
the subjectivity of our knowledge : that is, the fact, 
admitted on all hands, that all our knowledge of things 
external to ourselves is derived solely from the moods 
of our own mind. Hence it is maintained that it 
follows, first, that we have no sufficient proof that there 
exists anything external to ourselves at all ; and secondly, 
even granting that there are things external to ourselves, 
we have no sufficient proof that they are what they 
seem to us. 

Now the three great questions of metaphysics are — 

1. Has human knowledge any absolute certainty ? 

2. What is the nature of God ? 



Lewes, Maurice, Fleming. 6g 

3. What is the origin of the external world ? 

And of course it is evident that if the first question 
is answered in the negative, metaphysical science is 
arrested on the threshold. If it is decided that man 
can know nothing certainly, it is useless to go on to 
enquire about anything. 

Of the existence of our own mind we are assured 
by consciousness ; and consciousness is evidence which 
even the metaphysician must sustain as sufficient. 
Coglto^ ergo sum.) may not be reasoning ; but it states an 
ultimate fact. Consciousness assures us of the exist- 
ence of our own mind, and of the sequence of moods 
and feelings in it : and there Mr. Lewes holds we must 
stop ; we have no metaphysical certitude of anything 
further. The system of common sense says — No : we 
must take the first step out of ourselves without exact 
reasoning, but on the authority of something as irre- 
sistible ; and once we get beyond the limit of our own 
consciousness, we have all the universe before us into 
which to enquire. 

If any man were to tell a person of ordinary intelli- 
gence, not bewildered by metaphysical reasonings, that 
we have no ground at all for believing in the existence 
of an external world, that representative person would 
probably regard his informant as a fool or a knave. He 
would say, Are there not trees, and fields, and houses, 
and men, and countless interests beginning and hinging 
on these seen realities, around me day by day ? So far 
from feeling it easy to realise the existence of a world 
of mind, and hard to realise that of a world of matter, 
most men could testify from their own experience that 



/O Recent Metaphysical Works — 

the difficulty is all the other way. The Christian's 
prayer is for grace to c walk by faith, and not by sight.' 
The material things and interests amid which we dwell 
are only too successful in crowding out of the soul the 
care and the remembrance of £ the things which are 
not seen.' 

Yet it is not a quibble, but an incontestable truth, 
that all we have truly indisputable evidence of, is the 
existence of mind, and conditions of mind. All, except 
the universal sceptic, or the absolute nihilist, believe 
in the existence of their own mind and of its passing 
moods. How, then, do we know of the existence of 
an external world ? Thus : Amid the successive states 
of our mind, there are certain states, termed states of 
sensation, which somehow we have got into the. way of 
referring for their causes to things beyond our own 
personality. And not only do we think that these 
states of mind are caused by things beyond ourselves, 
but that these give us information as to the nature and 
qualities of these outward things. Thus, the idea or 
impression of redness or roundness is only in the mind ; 
but we voluntarily and inevitably judge that this idea 
or impression is the result of something without ; and, 
likewise, that this something without is red or round. 
In short, the inevitable belief of all unsophisticated men 
everywhere has been, that from phenomena we can 
reason to noumena, and that things are in themselves 
what they seem to us. 

The teaching of the common-sense school is this : 
that along with the purely passive state of mind which 
is termed sensation, there goes an intellectual act which 



Lewes, Maurice, Fleming, Ji 

is termed perception^ which consists in a necessary refer- 
ence of the sensation for its cause, (i) to something 
beyond our own mind; (2) to some special external 
object : (3) of whose qualities we regard the sensation 
it conveys as making us in some degree aware. 

But the question comes — If all that you are con- 
scious of is states of the mind, how can you know 
that these states are the result of causes external ? 
Was not Bishop Berkeley right when he said that all 
we are sure of is mind, and states of mind, and that 
there is no such thing as matter at all ? And was not 
Hume's more sweeping scepticism just the fair inference 
from the fact which all admit ? In the words of Mr. 
Lewes, — 

As I cannot transcend the sphere of my consciousness, I can 
never know things except as they act upon me — as they affect 
my consciousness. In other words, a knowledge of the external 
world otherwise than as it appears to my sense, <which transforms 
and distorts it, is impossible. 

While other schools have laboriously sought to ex- 
plain all this, the common-sense school have taken the 
ground that the circumstances need, as they admit of, 
no explanation. Our perception of an external world 
is an ultimate fact, upon which reasoning is thrown 
away. By the make of our being, we must believe in 
a world beyond ourselves ; and it is certainly much 
more likely that sense will inform us rightly, than that 
(according to Mr. Lewes's gratuitous and groundless 
assumption) it will c transform and distort ' the notions 
it conveys to us. What resemblance there may be 



72 Recent Metaphysical Works — 

between the notion conveyed to us by sensational per- 
ception, and the thing itself of which we have the per- 
ception, we cannot, indeed, certainly know. It is 
conceivable that the phenomenon may be something 
very different from the noumenon. That which gives 
us the impression that it is a tree, may be something 
very different from what it seems. That which gives 
us the impression that it is a page of Fraser's Maga%ine, 
may be something else in fact. All we can say of the 
supposition is, that it is properly incredible. No man 
can think so. But reasoning in the case is futile. The 
purpose of reasoning is to show that which is false to 
be absurd ; and the sceptic's supposition is absurd 
already, before reasoning has touched it. And although 
sensations may not resemble their external causes, still 
they may suggest to us the truth as to these external 
causes. A black-edged letter does not resemble a 
friend's death, though it correctly informs us of it. 

The common-sense philosophy admits that there is 
no precise metaphysical proof of an external world, its 
objects and their qualities ; but it holds that common 
sense affords us evidence quite as cogent and indubitable 
as metaphysical proof. And upon this point all men 
are virtually and practically agreed. The sceptic lays 
the emphasis on the lack of metaphysical proof; the 
common-sense philosophy lays the emphasis upon the 
inevitable necessity of believing without metaphysical 
proof. As was said by Dr. Thomas Brown, c Yes, 
Reid bawled out we must believe in an outward world ; 
but added, in a whisper, we can give no reason for our 
belief. Hume bawls out, we can give no reason for 



Lewes, Maurice, Fleming. j% 

such a notion ; and whispers, I own we cannot get rid 
of it.' 

And our readers will probably believe that there can 
be no better refutation of a doctrine than just to feel 
that to go out from our chamber into the free air, and 
to look around on the trees, and fields, and hedges, 
blows the doctrine away into annihilation. We cannot 
help believing that these are trees, and fields, and 
hedges, just as they seem to us, notwithstanding Mr. 
Lewes's declaration that they are distorted and de- 
formed by the misrepresentations of sense. And why 
distorted and deformed ? If there be things external 
at all, what earthly reason is there for fancying that 
they are in any respect other than they seem ? More 
organs of sense might show us that outward things 
possess qualities which are now unrevealed to us ; 
but is there the remotest probability that these ad- 
ditional senses would contradict the assurances of 
those which we already possess ? If we find the 
metaphysician who professes to disbelieve the exist- 
ence of anything external to himself; or to believe 
that he may indeed be living in an outward world, but 
one composed of shams and delusions placed there to 
delude him without aim or end ; yet conducting him- 
self like other men — interested in politics, sharp as to 
money, conscious of the existence and qualities of his 
dinner, his garden, his servants, his books, his easy 
chair — it follows certainly that the metaphysician does 
believe in the existence of external nature, and does 
believe that things are what they seem. Dreary beyond 
imagining would the belief be, if the belief could be at 



74 Recent Metaphysical Works — 

all, that the individual / have gone through what we 
call life, the sole occupant of a world peopled solely by 
my own ideas. Does a watchmaker, busied in arranging 
his springs and, wheels, toil to polish and adjust his own 
mental impressions ? Does he try by delicate touches 
to get things so that their c distorted images ' may 
appear right to him ? Did we, in company with two 
or three clusters of ideas, which we call our gardeners, 
plant carefully, this November day, the ideas of hollies 
and cypresses ? Is Mr. Lewes an idea in the mind of 
me, the writer of this article ? Is the income-tax an 
hallucination in the anxious annuitant's own mind ? 

But still the metaphysician replies that although the 
evidence he has of the existence of an outwarji world 
be quite sufficient for his practice and for his guidance 
in actual life, it is not sufficient as a foundation on 
which to build a philosophy. ' I can get no foun- 
dation,' he says ; c and why, then, seek to build a 
superstructure which has nothing on which to rest ? ' 
And the main characteristic of the common-sense 
school is its maintaining that common sense furnishes 
a foundation sufficient for philosophy as well as for 
practical life. 

Mr. Lewes is of opinion that the Scotch philosophy 
has fallen into merited contempt. We join issue with 
him. It has appeared satisfactory and sufficient to the 
most acute and comprehensive thinkers the world has 
seen. And it can hardly be said that a system has 
fallen into contempt, when it is confessedly the system 
on which all mankind habitually and necessarily act, 
and without which the business of mankind must stand 



Lewes, Maurice, Fleming. 75 

still. There are such things, Mr. Lewes will admit, 
as ethics, politics, and physics : there is such a thing 
as religion : and on what do all these rest, if not on 
the fundamental principle of the common-sense school ? 
The truth is that Mr. Lewes is virtually an adherent 
of that school, of Reid and Stewart, of which he speaks 
so depreciatingly. That school holds, in common with 
Mr. Lewes, that the science of ontology must be given 
up : the essence of either matter or mind is unknown 
to us, and we know nothing but qualities of either. 
Therefore, say the Scotch metaphysicians, let us, as to 
the external world, practise the physical system of 
induction ; and as to the mental world, let us keep to 
psychology, or the inductive examination of the phe- 
nomena of mind. As to the noumena of either mind or 
matter we know nothing, and it is not needful that 
we should know anything. In fact, the common- 
sense system is precisely the Positive system, if we 
understand the Positive system in that sense in 
which it is reasonable, safe, and true. But while Mr. 
Lewes, pushing Positivism into theory, proposes, in pet 
that he cannot know the essence of matter and mind, 
to throw metaphysics overboard altogether, and to 
declare that all philosophy is impossible, the common- 
sense school proposes to take for granted what must 
be taken for granted if we are to live at all, and to see 
whether a superstructure of metaphysics as well as of 
physics cannot be raised upon that safe and inevitable 
assumption. The common-sense philosophers, in short, 
propose to base a philosophic system on the same 
foundation on which rest the Pyramids, the Britannia- 



7 6 Recent Metaphysical Works — 

bridge, the North- Western Railway. Mr. Lewes vir- 
tually follows the self-same course : the point at issue 
between him and the advocates of common sense is 
merely as to the name by which the system adopted by 
both shall be distinguished. The matter in dispute is 
this: Mr. Lewes says to the Scotch metaphysicians, 
' Yes, you propose a Positive system, and I entirely 
agree with you in the system which you propose — but 
that is not philosophy. Your system,' Mr. Lewes 
would say, c is a sound, sensible, working system, on 
which the world may proceed excellently well ; but it 
is not a metaphysical system.' And this is the point of 
difference. All men virtually agree in a Positivism, 
not pushed to an extreme : but shall we call it a philo- 
sophical system, or a svstem which denies the possi- 
bility of all philosophy ? The Scotch School calls the 
system the Philosophy of Common Sense — the Philo- 
sophy of Induction. Mr. Lewes holds the system just 
as firmly, but says that it is no philosophy at all ; that 
by embracing it we are really casting philosophy to the 
winds. Yet it is remarkable how the statements of 
Mr. Lewes and Dr. Reid converge, even upon this 
question of terminology. When Dr. Reid says, as to 
the existence and qualities of an external world, ' I 
renounce philosophy, and hold by common sense,' 
what is this but stating, strongly and clearly, Mr. 
Lewes's own position ? But Dr. Reid says that having 
scrambled somehow or other across the gulf which 
parts mind and matter — having received the evidence 
of sense and consciousness as something which pre- 
cludes the necessity of any reasoning — we may now go 



Lewes, Maurice, Fleming. yy 

on to erect a system of psychology, of ethics, of re- 
ligion, which may be properly called a philosophical 
system. Mr. Lewes, on the contrary, holds that, 
wanting the first link, we need go no further in con- 
structing the chain. The first step in the pedigree of 
philosophy is not philosophical : and this vitiates all that 
is to follow, and prevents it from ever growing entitled 
to be called philosophy at all. The Scotch school says, 
c Let us be content ; let us make the most of what we 
have got, though it be not all we could have wished.' 
Mr. Lewes says, c As I cannot get all I want, I shall 
have nothing.' Whatever this principle may be worth 
intellectually, surely it is morally very poor philosophy. 
It is the very condition of our being in this world that 
we must take and make the best of, not what we 
desire, but what we can get. Intellectually, as well as 
socially and politically, it is no system of optimism 
under which we live. It is enough if things are so, 
that they will do. They might do far better. It is all 
we are to look for in a present life that the world shall 
go on, though with many an uneasy jolt, and strain, 
and struggle. 

We cannot but admire the ingenuity, the information, 
the comprehensive grasp of Mr. Lewes's work. The 
fact that the book was originally written to be addressed 
to a popular audience accounts for the familiar strain of 
many of its illustrations, and may excuse some which 
approach near to the confines of clap-trap. There are 
passages in which » Mr. Lewes's style, always clear, 
lively, and pointed, appears to us such as would some- 
what grate on a fastidious taste ; but of course it is 



y 8 Recent Metaphysical Works — 

merely a question whose opinion on such a matter is 
worth most, Mr. Lewes's or his reviewer's. We have 
a strong conviction that in philosophic opinion Mr. 
Lewes is still in a transition state ; and we doubt not 
that a few years, if we are spared to see them, will find 
him one of the most eloquent, most subtle, and most 
learned of the adherents and advocates of the system of 
common sense. And we have felt with pleasure in 
reading his book that it was no mere musty meta- 
physician whose pen had written these attractive pages. 
The skill and ease of the accomplished author were 
apparent everywhere. Mr. Lewes has won laurels in 
other fields than the now little-trodden one of specu- 
lative philosophy. The accomplished biographer, the 
keen observer, and the graceful narrator of physical 
changes and appearances, the generous appreciator of 
struggling genius, will number many readers whom the 
name of philosophy, grim and repellent, will keep ofF 
from ever opening a volume so grave as this. And 
surely when Mr. Lewes, in days devoted to new Sea- 
side Studies^ shall look out upon sunny waves and 
golden sunsets, he will feel a gentle remorse that, in his 
ardour to support a point of pure speculation, he should 
ever have so far maligned nature as to maintain that 
she appears to us ' distorted and deformed.' Outward 
nature, we think, will suffice as she is, even in a fallen 
world. It is a beautiful world after all. On blue 
skies and blossoming trees there is no apparent taint 
cast from the dark domain of evil. It is the world of 
mind that needs amending. It is there that we trace 
an ever-recurring stain, for which no philosophy can 



Lewes, Maurice, Fleming. yg 

account, and which no philosophy can remove. And 
in a higher Presence than that of human intellect or its 
results we render thanks for a gracious system which 
can enlighten and comfort simple hearts which could 
make nothing of metaphysics. In the true philosophy, 
the grand Positivism of Christianity, there is rest at last ; 
and rest within the reach of all. 



8o 



III. 

THORNDALE ; OR, THE CONFLICT OF OPINIONS.* 

AUTHORS, moral and political, have of late 
years been recognising the fact, that abstract 
truths become much more generally attractive when 
something of human interest is added to them. Most 
people feel as if thoughts and opinions gain a more 
substantial being, and lose their ghost-like intangibility, 
when we know something of the character and history 
of the man who entertained them, and something of the 
outward scenery amid which he entertained them. Very 
many persons feel as if, in passing from fact, or what 
purports to be fact, to principle, they were exchanging 
the firm footing of solid land for the yielding and im- 
palpable air; and a framework of scenes and persons 
is like a wing to buoy them up in traversing that unac- 
customed medium. And there are few indeed to whom 
a peculiar interest does not result when views and 
opinions, instead of standing nakedly on the printed 
page, are stated and discussed in friendly council by 

* Thorndale ; or y the Conflict of Opinions. By William Smith. Edinburgh : 
1857. 



The Conflict of Opinions. 8 1 

individual men, seated upon a real grassy slope, canopied 
by substantial trees, and commanding a prospect of 
real hills, and streams, and valleys. It is not entirely 
true that argument has its weight and force in itself, 
quite apart from its author. In the matter of practical 
effect, on actual human beings, a good deal depends on 
the lips it comes from. 

The author of Thorndale has recognised and acted 
upon this principle. Mr. William Smith is a philo- 
sopher and a poet ; and whoever sits down to read his 
new book as an ordinary work of fiction, to be hurried 
through for its plot-interest, will probably not turn 
many pages before closing the volume. The great 
purpose of the work is to set out a variety of opinions 
upon several matters which concern the highest inte- 
rests of the individual man and of the human race ; 
but, instead of presenting them in naked abstractness, 
Mr. Smith has set them in a slight story, and given them 
as the tenets or the fancies of different men, whose 
characters are so drawn that these tenets and fancies 
appear to be just their natural culmination and result. 
If we were disposed to be hypercritical, we might say 
that the different characters sketched by Mr. Smith are 
too plainly built up to serve as the substrata of the 
opinions which they express. There is hardly allow- 
ance enough made for the waywardness and incon- 
sistency of human conclusion and action. Given any 
one of Mr. Smith's men in certain circumstances, 
and we are only too sure of what he will do or say. 
The Utopian is always hopeful ; the desponding phi- 
losopher is never brightened up by a ray of hope. But 

G 



82 Thorndale ; or, 

this, it is obvious, is a result arrived at upon system ; 
for we shall find abundant proof in the volume that 
Mr. Smith has read deeply and accurately into human 
nature, in all its weaknesses, fancies, hopes, and fears. 
It is long since we have met with a more remarkable 
or worthy book. Mr. Smith is always thoughtful and 
suggestive : he has been entirely successful in carrying 
out his wish to produce a volume in reading which a 
thoughtful man will often pause with his finger between 
the leaves, and muse upon what he has read. We 
judge that the book must have been written slowly, 
and at intervals, from its affluence of beautiful thought. 
No mind could have turned off such material with the 
equable flow of a stream. We know few works in 
which there may be found so many fine thoughts, 
light-bringing illustrations, and happy turns of expres- 
sion, to invite the reader's pencil. A delicate refine- 
ment, a simple and pathetic eloquence, a kindly sym- 
pathy with all sentient things, are everywhere apparent : 
but the construction of the book, in which the most 
opposite opinions are expressed by the different cha- 
racters, without the least editorial comment, approval 
or disapproval, renders it difficult to judge what are 
truly the opinions of the author himself. Mr. Smith's 
English style is of classic beauty : nothing can surpass 
the delicate grace and finish of many passages of de- 
scription and reflection ; and although it was of course 
impossible, and indeed not desirable, that equal pains 
should be bestowed upon the melody of all the pages 
of the book, still the language is never slovenly j the 
hand of the tasteful scholar is everywhere. Nor 



The Conflict of Opinions. 83 

should we fail to remark the author's versatility of 
power. Everything he does is done with equal ease 
and felicity, — description of external nature, analysis 
of feeling and motive, close logic, large views of men 
and things. There is not the gentle and graceful 
humour of Mr. Helps : the book is serious through- 
out, with no infusion of playfulness. The author 
evidently thinks that in this world there is not much 
to smile at, — unless it be at everything. Let us re- 
mark that in this volume the characters come and 
go as in real life. There is nothing of the novel's 
artificial working up of interest, deepening to the close. 
Mr. Smith may say of his book, as Mr. Bailey of his 
grand but unequal poem — 

It has a plan, but no plot: — Life has none. 

But Mr. Smith's men, after all, are not such as one 
commonly meets. They are all greatly occupied, and 
for the most part perplexed and distressed, about specu- 
lative and social difficulties. Now in ordinary life such 
distresses are little felt. Are we wrong in saying that 
they are never felt at all, except in idleness — or by 
minds far above the average of the race ? How little 
are the perplexities of speculation to the busy man, 
anxious and toiling to find the means of maintaining 
his wife and children, of paying his Christmas bills, 
and generally of making the ends meet at the close of 
the year ! That, whether we admit the fact or deny 
it, is, with the great majority even of cultivated men, 
the practical problem of life. And indeed it is sad to 
think how, long before middle age, in many a man 



84 ThomdaJe ; or, 

who started with higher aspirations, that becomes the 
great end of labour and of thought. But it seems to 
be a law of mind that as the grosser and more material 
wants are supplied, other Wants of a more ethereal and 
fanciful nature come to be felt. And thus perhaps 
many a man, whom circumstances now compel to 
bestow all his energies on the quest of the supply of 
the day that is passing over him and his, is by those 
very circumstances saved from feeling wants more 
crushing, and from grappling with riddles and mysteries 
that sit with a heavy perplexity upon the heart. Let us 
be thankful if we are not too independent of work : let 
us be thankful that we are not too thoughtful and able. 
Mr. Smith's book sets out with a charming descrip- 
tion of a secluded dwelling to which a young philosophic 
thinker, smitten by consumption, had retired to die. 
On a little terrace, near the summit of Mount Posilipo, 
there stands a retired villa, looking from that height 
over the Bay of Naples. Overlooked by none, it 
commands a wide extent of view. Myrtle and roses 
have overgrown its pillared front. The rock descends 
sheer down from the terrace. Charles Thorndale, the 
hero of the book, had been charmed by the Villa Scarpa 
in the course of a continental tour, made while still in 
health ; and when stricken with the disease of which 
he died, and when the physician spoke of the climate 
of Italy, he chose this for his last retreat. It would 
not be long he would be there, he knew 3 and in its 
quiet he had much to think of. 

It is a spot, one would say, in which it would be very hard to 
part with this divine faculty of thought. It seemed made for 



The Conflict of Opinions. 85 

the very spirit of meditation. The little platform on which the 
villa stands is so situated that, while it commands the most extensive 
prospect imaginable, it is itself entirely sheltered from observation. 
No house of any kind overlooks it 5 from no road is it visible j 
not a sound from the neighbouring city ascends to it. From 
one part of the parapet that bounds the terrace you may sometimes 
catch sight of a swarthy bare-legged fisherman, sauntering on the 
beach, or lying at full length in the sun, It is the only specimen 
of humanity you are likely to behold : you live solely in the eye 
of nature. It is with difficulty you can believe that within the 
space of an hour you may, if you choose it, be elbowing your 
way, jostled and stunned, among the swarming population of 
Naples — surely the noisiest hive of human beings anywhere to be 
found on the face of the earth. Here, on these heights, is perfect 
stillness with perfect beauty. What voices come to you come from 
the upper air — the winds and the melody of birds ; and not un- 
frequently the graceful sea-gull utters its short plaintive cry, as it 
wheels round and back to its own ocean fields. And then that 
glorious silent picture for ever open to the eye ! Picture ! you 
hastily retract the word. It is no dead picture ; it is the living 
spirit of the universe, manifesting itself, in glorious vision, to the 
eye and the soul of man. 

Thorndale was a studious man, but had not been 
attracted by either of the learned professions. His 
modest competency relieved him from the necessity of 
choosing a decided path in life. Like many meditative 
idlers, he intended, vaguely, to write a book ; and, 
indeed, he did finish a philosophical treatise more than 
once ; but he always became dissatisfied with it and 
destroyed it. But in his retirement at Villa Scarpa a 
large manuscript volume lay on his table, in which, 
' the habit of the pen ' clinging to him to the last, he 
was accustomed to write down his thoughts upon what- 
ever topic interested him for the time. This book was 



86 Thorndale ; or, 

autobiography, essay, diary, record of former conver- 
sations with friends, as the humour of the moment 
prompted ; and we are invited to believe that this 
book, having fallen into the hands of Mr. Smith, is 
now given to the world : — 

It is precisely this manuscript volume, note-book, memoir, 
diary, whatever it should be called, which we have to present to 
the reader. In it Thorndale, though apparently with little of set 
purpose or design, gives us a description of himself and of several 
friends, or rather sketches out their opinions and modes of think- 
ing. Amongst these two may be at once particularly mentioned : 
Clarence, who might be called a representative of the philosophy 
of hope j and Seckendorf, his complete contrast, and who, 
especially on the subject of human progress, takes the side of 
denial or of cavil. 

The author, or editor, sets before us the character 
of his hero, less by one complete description than by 
many touches, given here and there, as he exhibits 
Thorndale to us in various combinations of circum- 
stances, and at several critical points in his life. Our 
impression of Thorndale is being retouched, modified, 
lightened, and shadowed on to the close of the book. 
He was a meditative and melancholy man, of little 
pith or active energy ; he was shy and retiring, over- 
shadowed by a settled despondency, but always kind 
and gentle, with no trace of fretfulness or irritability. 
Although his character is an interesting and truthful 
one, it is essentially morbid ; and we may be glad that 
men like him must always be few. We should have 
no railroads, no Great Easterns, no ocean telegraphs, 
in a world peopled by Thorndales. The weakly 
physical constitution which he bore from birth had 



The Conflict of Opinions. 87 

much to do with the tone of his thought and feeling. 
The remark is in the main just and sound, though it 
was made by Boswell : — 

The truth is, that we judge of the happiness of misery of life 
differently at different times, according to the state of our change- 
able frame. I always remember a remark made to me by a 
Turkish Lady educated in France : Mafoi, monsieur, notre bon- 
heur depend de la f agon que notre sang arcule. 

Nor ought we to forget that deeply philosophic 
remark of Sydney Smith, that little stoppages in the 
bodily circulation are the things which, above all 
others, darken our views of life and of man. A 
friend, said the genial physiologist, comes to him in 
a most depressed condition. He declares that his 
affairs are getting embarrassed ; that he must retrench 
his establishment and retire to the country ; that his 
daughter's cough has settled upon the lungs ; that his 
wife is breaking up, and his son going to the mischief. 
But Sydney only asked on what he supped the even- 
ing before, and finds that he then partook of lobster 
to an undue degree. c All this,' he says, c all these 
gloomy views are the lobster.' Instead of seeking 
directly to minister to a mind diseased, he does so 
indirectly, but not the less effectually. He suggests* 
medicine, not philosophy. And next day the world 
is a capital world, after all ; the income is ample, the 
cough is gone^ the wife is in rude health, and the son 
all that a father's heart could wish. Now in the case 
of Thorndale, there was an entire deficiency of healthy 
animalism ; and if, as a Scotch divine lately declared in a 
sermon published by royal command, it is easier for a 



88 Thorndale ; or, 

camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a 
dyspeptic man to be kind, gentle, and long-suffering ; 
not less true is it that a well-knit, vigorous, sinewy 
mind is oftentimes trammelled and hampered all through 
life, by being linked to a weakly, puny, jaded body. 
How much of Sydney Smith's wit, how much of 
Christopher North's reckless abandonment of glee, 
was the result of physical organisation ! How incom- 
prehensible to many men must such despondency as 
Thorndale's seem ! No worldly wants or anxieties, 
no burden of remorse, kind friends around him, what 
right had he to be unhappy?* Thorndale, in short, 
is a less energetic and passionate form of the nameless 
hero of Maud. Shall we confess that a less happy 
association at certain points in his history suggested 
itself to our mind ? We thought of Mr. Augustus 
Moddle; of whom his historian records as follows : — 

He often informed Mrs. Todgers that the sun had set upon 
him j that the billows had rolled over him ; that the car of Jug- 
gernaut had crushed him ; and also that the deadly upas tree of 
Java had blighted him.f 

Young men, who at five-and-twenty profess that 
they have lost all interest in life, and that they have 

* We remember a review of Maud which we read in a certain provin- 
cial journal. The writer evidently thought the gloomy hero an ungrateful 
and querulous fellow for making such a moan. ' Why,' said the reviewer, 
' the man was in very comfortable circumstances : he was able to have 
two servants (" I keep but a man and a maid ") : and what earthly right 
had he to be always grumbling ? If a man has two servants ought he not 
to be content ? ' 

■f Dickens's Martin Chuzzleivit. 



The Conflict of Opinions, 89 

done with time, are by no means uncommon. But 
Byron's influence is wearing out, and they are pretty 
generally laughed at. Yet where a lad at college can 
say sincerely, as Thorndale said — 

For me there was more excitement to be got out of any dingy 
book, thumbed over by a solitary rushlight, than from fifty ball- 
rooms — 

his mind is taking a morbid growth, which bodes no 
good to himself; nor are things better when he goes on 
a tour to the Cumberland lakes, and instead of cheer- 
fully enjoying the scenes around him, goes on as 
follows : — 

Forgetful of lake and mountain, my eyes fixed perhaps on 
the topmost bar of some roadside gate, which I had intended to 
open, or pausing stock-still before some hedgerow in the solitary 
lane, apparently intent upon the buds of the hawthorn, as if I 
were penetrating into the very secrets of vegetable life, I have 
stood for hours musing on the intricate problems which our 
social condition presents to us. 

We need not say that such a man is out of his place 
in England in the nineteenth century. In this age we 
want, not visionaries, but actors ; healthy, robust men, 
like Arnold, who can think and reason, and who can 
likewise walk five miles in the hour. Perhaps, indeed, 
the cry for ' Muscular Christianity ' is passing into cant ; 
and we know of noble minds which, notwithstanding 
the clog of physical debility and suffering, bear a kindly 
sympathy towards all mankind, and make the race their 
debtors for the gift of elevating thoughts. But as for 
Thorndale — sensitive as the mimosa, ever watching 



90 Thorn dale ; or, 

with introverted eye the lights and shadows of his own 
mind — how could he be happy ? A certain amount of 
insensibility is in this world needful to that. We must 
not bear a nervous "system so delicately appreciative of 
external influences as to keep us ever on the flutter or 
on the rack. Above all, let us have the equable mind, 
though it should live in a light which is uniformly sub- 
dued, rather than that which is ever alternating between 
April sunshine and April gloom. Justly and thought- 
fully did Wordsworth make this equanimity a marked 
characteristic of the happiness of a higher life : — 

He spake of love, such love as spirits feel, 
In worlds whose course is equable and pure : 
No fears to beat away, no strife to heal, 
The past unsighed for, and the future sure : 
Spake of heroic arts in graver mood 
Revived, with finer harmony pursued.* 

We may have faults to find with the character of 
Thorndale, regarded as that of a representative man : 
but we feel at once with what delicate accuracv the 
author maintains its keeping. From first to last, he 
never speaks or acts otherwise than he ought, under 
the given conditions. The malady that killed him had 
marked him from his birth ; and he is always the same 
kindly, tender-hearted, meditative, unenergetic, spirit- 
less being. Mr. Smith shows us the whole man by 
one happy touch. Thorndale had chosen the shores 
of Loch Lomond as his autumn retreat one year. He 
had been there only a day, when he suddenly resolved 

* Laodamia. 



The Conflict of Opinions. g i 

that he would return and seek the hand of a gentle 
cousin whom he loved, and who appears not to have 
been indifferent to him. He had hitherto kept silence, 
because her worldly position -was higher than his own. 
He left Loch Lomond on the instant ; he travelled on 
day and night ; he seemed never to have drawn breath 
till he stood at the gate of the shrubbery that sur- 
rounded Sutton Manor, her home and his. 

Then indeed I paused. Leaning on the half-opened gate, I 
saw again my own position in its true and natural light. Was 
it not always known and understood that such a thing was not to 
be ? One after the other, all my fallacious reasonings deserted 
me. What madness could have brought me there ! I hoped no 
one had seen me. Slowly and softly the half-opened gate was 
closed again. I walked away, retracing my steps as unobserved 
as possible through the village. 

Here was Thorndale himself. Like most thought- 
ful men, he had much of the irresolution of Hamlet, 
— the irresolution that comes of thinking too much. 
There can be no doubt that in order to act slap-dash 
with promptness and decision, it is best not to see a 
case in all its bearings. It is best to see one side 
clearly and strongly : and then no lurking irresolution 
will retard the arm in its descent. Here was the secret 
of poor Thorndale's creeping away with a sinking heart 
from the only presence he cared for in this world. 
There is not invariable truth in the lines of Montrose, — 

He either fears his fate too much, 

Or his desert is small, 
Who dares not put it to the touch, 

And win or lose it all. 



9 2 Thorn dale ; or, 

We need not relate how the author explains his 
chancing upon Villa Scarpa in wandering about Naples. 
The villa was then deserted : all was over. We have 
no particulars recorded of Thorndale's death. We 
confess we feel in this omission something of cruelty 
on the author's part towards his hero. There is some- 
thing pitiful in the story of the neglected manuscript- 
volume, found after the poor visionary was gone, hidden 
away in the roof of the abandoned house ; and in the 
picture which rises before us of the tender-hearted 
youth, lying down to die alone. He had a kind ser- 
vant, indeed ; and an old friend, with his little adopted 
daughter, who reappeared as evening was darkening 
down, may be supposed to have tended and soothed 
the last agony. But Mr. Smith, in his careful avoid- 
ance of whatever might seem a clap-trap expedient to 
excite interest and feeling, is entirely silent as to the 
close. However, he chanced on the deserted Villa 
Scarpa : he found a despatch-box, bearing the name 
of Charles Thorndale, whom he had known, though 
not intimately. This despatch-box contained the 
manuscript volume already mentioned, which Thorn- 
dale seemed to have bequeathed to the first finder ; and 
the good-natured Italian to whom the villa belonged, 
willingly gave up box and manuscript to one who said 
he had been Thorndale's friend. We quote a single 
sentence, for its graceful beauty, from the picture of 
Thorndale called up to the mind's eye of his editor, on 
thus chancing on his last retreat : — - 

His eye was not that of which it is so often said that it looks 
through you, for it rather seemed to be looking out beyond you. 



The Conflict of Opinions. 93 

The object at which it gazed became the half-forgotten centre 
round which the eddying stream of thought was flowing ; and 
you stood there, like some islet in a river which is encircled on 
all sides by the swift and silent flood. 

The manuscript volume now published has been 
divided by its editor into five books, and each of these 
into several chapters. Book I. is called The Last 
Retreat ; it is given to many reflections, mostly thrown 
out with little arrangement, upon the Sentiment of 
Beauty, and upon the two Futurities, the one on this 
side and the other beyond the grave. In Book II., 
which is called The Retrospect, the current of thought 
has set away into the past ; and we have an autobio- 
graphical sketch. Book III., called Cyril, or the 
Modern Cistercian, gives an account of the conflict of 
thought by which a companion passed from an evan- 
gelical Anglican to a Roman Catholic monk. Book 
IV., Seckendorf, or the Spirit of Denial, sketches the 
character and views of a friend who cavilled at the 
possibility of all human progress. In Book V., Clarence, 
or the Utopian, we first read how, as strength and life 
had well-nigh ebbed away, Thorndale met once more 
with an old friend of hopeful views, who seems to 
have stayed by him to the last : and when Thorndale's 
weak hand had laid down the pen for the last time, 
Clarence wrote out, in the last two hundred pages of 
the volume, his Confessio Fidei ; — a connected view of 
his theory of man, the growth of the individual con- 
sciousness, and the development of the human race. 

The earlier part of the book is very desultory ; and 
the book as a whole appeals to a limited class of 



94 Thorndale ; or, 

readers. There will never be a rush for it to the 
book-club in the county town. Young-lady readers 
will for the most part vote it a bore : and solid old 
gentlemen of bread-and-butter intellect will judge 
Thorndale and his friends a crew of morbid dreamers, 
— though the book, amid sublimer speculations; sets 
out here and there much common sense on the affairs 
of practical life. But we trust that Mr. Smith may 
find an audience fit, and not so few. It elevates and 
refines the mind to hold converse with an author of 
his stamp. And how much the world must have gone 
through before such a character as Thorndale's became 
possible ! No appliance of modern luxury, no con- 
trivance of modern science, says so much as the con- 
ception of such a character for the civilisation and 
artificiality of our modern life. Although the book is 
mainly dissertational, the reader will find in it much 
exquisite narrative, and much skilful delineation of 
character, in the history of the hero =and his friends, 
their views and fates. Yet, while we cordially acknow- 
ledge in Mr. Smith a man of refined and pathetic 
genius, we should not be doing justice to ourselves if 
we did not say, that in all the views of life and society, 
whether hopeful or desponding, which are set out in 
the book, we have felt strongly a great blank and void. 
We believe, and we humbly hope we shall never 
cease believing, that Christianity shows us the true 
stand-point from which to look at man, and the true 
lever by which to elevate him. We believe that the 
same influence which has raised our hopes to ' life and 
immortality/ must and will elevate and purify this 



The Conflict of Opinions. 95 

mortal life. We believe that it is false philosophy 
to ignore the existence, power, and teaching of the 
Christian faith : and to take pains, before looking into 
the framework and the prospects of society, to exclude 
the only light which can search out the dark recesses, 
and dissipate the gloom that hangs before. Why 
should a man persist in wading through Chat Moss on 
a drenching December day, when the means are pro- 
vided of flitting oyer it, light and warm and dry ? Why 
should we go up to Box-hill, and declare we shall dig 
our way through it with our own nails and fingers 
(being in haste) ; when we know that it has been 
nobly tunnelled for us already ? 

The first book, entitled The Last Retreat , consists 
of disjointed fragments of thought, cast upon the page 
with little effort at arrangement. All these fragments 
are well worthy of preservation ; many of them are of 
striking originality and force. The dying man becomes 
aware that a peculiar beauty has been added to the 
beautiful scenes around him by the close approach of 
death. He says : — 

I owe to death half the beauty of this scene, and altogether 
owe to him the constant serenity with which I gaze upon it. . . . 
Strange ! how the beauty and mystery of all nature is heightened 
by the near prospect of that coming darkness which will sweep 
it all away! — that night which will have no star in it! These 
heavens, with all their glories, will soon be blotted out for me. 
The eye, and that which is behind the eye, will soon close, soon 
rest, and there will be no more beauty, no more mystery for me. 
. . . What an air of freshness, of novelty, and surprise does each 



g6 Tbomdale ; or, 

old and familiar object assume to me when I think of parting 
with it for ever ! 

There is no more of ennui nonv . Time is too short, and this 
world too wonderful. Everything I behold is new and strange. 
If a dog looks up at me in the face, I startle at his intelligence. 
' I am in a foreign land,' you say. True, all the world has be- 
come foreign land to me. I am perpetually on a voyage of 
discovery. 

Very true, very real, is this feeling, drawn from the 
much-suggesting Nuf >yap sp^srai ! We really do 
enjoy things intensely, because we know we are not 
to have them long. And how well does experience 
certify that the most familiar scene grows new and 
strange to us when we are forthwith to leave it. The 
room in which we have sat day by day for years, — rise 
to quit it for the last time, and we shall see something 
about its proportions, its aspect, that we never saw 
before. The little walk we have paced hundreds of 
times, — how different every evergreen beside it will 
seem, when we pace it silently, knowing that we shall 
do so no more ! 

Here is an apt and happy comparison : — 

When the lofty and barren mountain, says a legend I have 
somewhere read, was first upheaved into the sky, and from its 
elevation looked down on the plains below, and saw the valley 
and the less elevated hills covered with verdure and fruitful trees, 
it sent up to Brahma something like a murmur of complaint, 
* Why thus barren ? Why these scarred and naked sides exposed 
to the eye of man ? ' And Brahma answered, ' The very light 
shall clothe thee, and the shadow of the passing cloud shall be as 
a royal mantle. More verdure would be less light. Thou shalt 
share in the azure of heaven, and the youngest and whitest cloud 



The Conflict of Opinions, 97 

of a summer day shall nestle in thy bosom. Thou belongest half 
to us.' 

So was the mountain dowered. And so, too, have the loftiest 
minds of men been in all ages dowered. To lower elevations 
have been given the pleasant verdure, the vine, and the olive. 
Light, light alone, and the deep shadow of the passing cloud, — 
these are the gifts of the prophets of the race. 

Thorndale felt strongly what every reflective man 
must feel, that the ordinary arguments for the immor- 
tality of the soul, drawn from the light of nature, are 
quite insufficient and unsatisfactory. It is upon entirely 
different grounds, and these grounds partaking often 
but little of the nature of argument, that the belief in 
the doctrine really rests. Still the argument fills the 
page ; and is appended to the doctrine much as in cheap 
Gothic buildings a buttress is added to a wall which 
does not need its support, because it at least looks as 
if it supported the wall. Thorndale's illustration is 
this : — 

In old woodcuts one sometimes sees a vessel in full sail upon 
the ocean, and perched aloft upon the clouds are a number of 
infant cherubs, with puffed-out cheeks, blowing at the sails. The 
swelling canvas is evidently filled by a stronger wind than these 
infant cherubs, sitting in the clouds, could supply. They do 
not fill the sail $ but they were thought to fill up the picture 
prettily enough. 

In truth, the usual arguments for immortality are 
quite futile : none more so than that founded upon the 
immateriality of the soul. The soul's immateriality 
is assumed to be proved by a manifest petitio principii, 
to use the logician's phrase. The soul la immaterial, 
we are told, because it thinks and feels ; and matter 

H 



9 8 Thorndale ; or, 

cannot think and feel. But if the soul be material, 
why then matter can think and feel. Thorndale 
indicates as follows the foundation of his own belief: — 

I think the contemplation of God brings with it the faith in 
immortality. The mere imperfections of our happiness here, our 
blundering lives and inequitable societies, our unrewarded virtues 
and unavenged crimes, our present need of the great threat of future 
punishments, — these do not, in my estimation, form safe grounds 
to proceed upon. They enter largely as grounds of a popular 
faith 5 but it would be unwise to build upon them : because to 
rest on such arguments would lead us to the conclusion, that in 
proportion as society advances to perfection, and men are more 
wise and just, in the same proportion will they have less pre- 
sumption for the hope of immortality. 

We confess that we stand in no great fear of this 
last suggestion. There is little prospect, as yet, of 
this world becoming too good to need another. We 
need now, and we shall need for many a year, all the 
comfort and help we can draw from c the world that 
sets this right.' 

Our readers will thank us for extracting the following 
passage : — 

A fond mother loses her infant. What more tender than the 
hope she has to meet it again in heaven ? Does she really, then, 
expect to find a little child in heaven ? some angel nurseling that 
she may eternally take to her bosom, fondle, feed, and caress ? 
Oh, do not ask her ! I would not have her ask herself. The 
consolatory vision springs spontaneously from the mother's grief. 
It is nature's own remedy. She gave that surpassing love, and a 
grief as poignant must follow. She cannot take away the grief : 
she half transforms into a hope. 

It is inde^ quite true, that in the attempt to define 
with precision the consolations and hopes which 



The Conflict of Opinions. 99 

Christianity affords us with respect to our departed 
friends, we sometimes only destroy what we desired to 
grasp. And it would be hard for us to say exactly 
how and in what form we hope to meet again the dear 
ones who have gone before us. Perhaps Archbishop 
Whately is right, when he suggests as one possible 
reason why revelation leaves the details so little filled in 
of the picture of immortality which it draws, that some 
margin may be left for the weakness of human thought 
and wish ; and that in matters beside the great essen- 
tial centre-truth, each may believe or may hope that 
which he would love the best. And in the matter of 
a little child's loss, we know that two quite opposite 
beliefs have been cherished. For ourselves, it seems 
more natural to think of the little thing as it left us ; 
we believe that, in the case of most of us, the little 
brother or sister that died long ago remains in remem- 
brance the same young thing for ever. Many years 
are passed, and we have grown older and more care- 
worn since our last sister died ; but she never grows 
older with the passing years ; and if God spares us to 
fourscore, we never shall think of her as other than 
the youthful creature she faded. Still there is pathos 
and nature in Dickens's description, how the father 
and mother who lost in early childhood one of two 
twin sisters, always pictured to themselves, year after 
year, the dead child growing in the world beyond the 
grave, in equal progress as the living child grew on 
earth. And Longfellow, in his touching poem of 
Resignation^ suggests a like idea : — 

H 2 

LoFC. 



ioo Thorndale ; or, 

Day after day, we think what she is doing 

In those bright realms of air : 
Year after year, her tender steps pursuing, 

Behold her grown more fair. 

Thus do we walk with her, and keep unbroken, 

The bond which nature gives, 
Thinking that our remembrance, though unspoken, 

May reach her where she lives. 

Not as a child shall we again behold her $ 

For when, with raptures wild, 
In our embraces we again enfold her, 

She will not be a child. 

It is worthy of notice, how the death of little chil- 
dren has formed the subject of several of the most 
touching poems in the language, Only those could 
have written them who have children of their own ; 
and few but parents can fully enter into their pathos. 
We may remind our readers of Mr. Moultrie's best 
poem, The Three Sons; of Mrs. Southey's (Caroline 
Bowles) beautiful picture of an infant's death-bed ; 
and in a volume lately published by Gerald Massey, 
natural feeling has kept affectation from spoiling a most 
touching piece, called The Mother's Idol Broken. And 
no one needs to be reminded of what it is that has 
afforded scope for the most pathetic touches of Dickens 
and Mrs. Beecher Stowe. 

Thorndale puts a somewhat startling question as to 
the extent of the gift of immortality. 

Why must I accept the alternative — all or none ? Why every 
Hun and Scythian, or else no Socrates or Plato ? Why must 
every corrupt thing be brought again to life, or else all hope be 
denied to the good and the great, the loving and the pious? 



The Conflict of Opinions. I o I 

Why must I measure my hopes by the hopes I would assign to 
the most weak or wicked of the race ? Let the poor idiot, let the 
vile Tiberius, be extinct for ever : must I too, and all these 
thoughts that stir in me, perish ? 

Probably Thorndale was not aware that this notion, 
which he throws out on merely philosophical grounds, 
is one which, in a modified form, has been suggested, 
if not maintained, upon theological principles, by the 
most independent and original theologian of the age — 
we mean the Archbishop of Dublin. Dr. Whately 
has proposed it as a subject for inquiry, whether those 
passages of Scripture which describe the everlasting 
destruction of the finally impenitent, may not be justly 
interpreted as signifying their total annihilation ; and 
thus, whether evil and suffering may not entirely cease 
to be in God's universe, not by an universal restoration 
of all things to the good and right, but by the total 
disappearance of that which has been marred past 
the mending ? No doubt, there is something un- 
utterably appalling in the thought of a soul in ever- 
lasting woe ; no doubt, to our finite minds, it appears 
the most consistent with the divine glory and happiness, 
that a time should come when there should be no more 
pain, sin, and death, anywhere ; but the Christian dares 
not add to or take from that which is written; and few, 
we think, can read the words even of the Saviour him- 
self as bearing any other meaning than one. And as 
for the difficulty suggested by Thorndale, we confess 
we can discern in it very little force. It is a humble 
thing, always and everywhere, to be a man : whether 
the man be Plato or the Hun. We do not look for 



102 Tbomdale ; or, 

immortality on the ground that we deserve it, or that 
we are fit for it. And although there may be truth in 
Judge Haliburton's bitter remark, that there is a greater 
difference between some men and some other men, 
than there is between these other men and some mon- 
keys ; still, in looking down from the divine elevation, 
we believe that the distances parting the lowest and 
highest, the worst and best, must seem very small. 
Look down from the top of Ben Nevis, and the tuft 
of heather which is a dozen inches higher than the 
heather round it, differs not appreciably from the 
general level. Nor should it be forgotten, that in the 
lowest and the worst, there is a potentiality of becoming 
good and noble under a certain influence which philo- 
sophy does not know of, but whose reality and power 
we are content to test by the logic of induction. The 
coarse lump of ironstone is in its essence the selfsame 
thing as the hair-spring of a watch. 

We pass to the second part of Thorndale's manu- 
script, The Retrospect, which will be much more 
interesting to ordinary readers than the first book. 
And here we find a graceful and beautiful sketch ot 
the history of his life, from the dawn of consciousness 
down to the time when he came to Villa Scarpa to die. 
He was the happy child of a gentle and loving mother, 
over whom early widowhood had cast a shade of 
melancholy. His father he never knew. A poor 
lieutenant in the navy, he died of fever caught as his 
ship lay rotting off the coast of Africa. The mother's 
piety was deep, and her faith undoubting ; she knew 
nothing of the world beyond her own little daisied 



The Conflict of Opinions. 103 

lawn. And the remembrance of the prayer she early- 
taught her child to utter, has inspired a passage which 
will come home to many hearts. 

Very singular and very pleasing to me is the remembrance of 
that simple piety of childhood ; of that prayer which was said so 
punctually night and morning, kneeling by the bedside. What 
did I think of, guiltless then of metaphysics — what image did I 
bring before my mind as I repeated my learnt petition with scru- 
pulous fidelity ? Did I see some venerable form bending 
down to listen ? Did He cease to look and listen when I had 
said it all ? Half prayer, half lesson, how difficult it is now to 
summon it back again ! But this I know, that the bedside where 
I knelt to this morning and evening devotion became sacred to 
me as an altar. I smile as I recal the innocent superstition which 
grew up in me, that the prayer must be said kneeling just there. 
If, some cold winter's night, I had crept into bed, thinking to 
repeat the petition from the warm nest itself, it would not do ! — 
it was felt in this court of conscience to be * an insufficient per- 
formance : ' there was no sleep to be had till I had risen, and, 
bedgowned as I was, knelt at the accustomed place, and said it 
all over again from the beginning to the end. To this day, I 
never see the little clean white bed in which a child is to sleep, 
but I see also the figure of a child kneeling in prayer at its side. 
And I, for the moment, am that child. No high altar in the most 
sumptuous church in Christendom could prompt my knee to bend 
like that snow-white coverlet, tucked in for a child's slumber. 

The mother early died ; and her brother, a baronet, 
who dwelt in a noble house standing in a fine old 
English park, adopted the desolate child as his own. 
Grand were the trees and fair the shrubberies of Sutton 
Manor ; but its great attraction to Thorndale was his 
little cousin Winifred. He loved her, he tells us, 
before he knew what love was, and long before he 
knew the vast worldly distance that parted even such 



1 04 Thorndale ; or, 

near relations. Lady Moberly, Winifred's mother, was 
a lady at once ultra-fashionable and ultra-evangelical. 
She was one of those of whom the sarcastic Saturday 
Review declared that the names of their great men 
must be written alike in the Peerage and in the Book 
of Life. Thorndale was shortly placed under the 
charge of a country clergyman, to be prepared for 
Oxford. Here he had one fellow-pupil, Luxmore, a 
youth passionately devoted to poetry. And his tutor's 
library furnished an endless store of poetry, theology, 
and philosophy, which were all devoured with equal 
avidity. When the vacation approached, Thorndale 
was somewhat surprised byreceiving from Lady Moberly 
a formal invitation to Sutton Manor. He had counted, 
as a matter of course, upon spending the vacation there. 
But her ladyship was cautious ; and her letter con- 
tained a postscript, cautioning Thorndale to beware of 
a certain fairy who haunted the shrubbery in which he 
was accustomed to walk. He learned the meaning of 
the postscript too soon. ' His cousin was more charming 
than ever ; but his love, hopeless, yet unconquerable, 
was on his part c a mere worship, where even the 
prayer was not to be spoken.' And this passion served 
to extinguish all ambition. He entered the cloisters of 
Magdalen, he tells us, 

As indifferent to the world as any monk of the fourteenth cen- 
tury could have been. Academical honours, or the greater 
distinctions in life to which they prepare the way, had no sort of 
charm for me. The ' daily bread' was secured ; and neither law, 
physic, nor divinity could have given me my Winifred. 

A life of mere reflection, then, was to be his portion. 



The Conflict of Opinions. 1 05 

His over-sensitive mind never recovered the frost of 
that early disappointment. Is it too much to say that 
it results from the morbid body, from the weakness of 
physical nature, when trouble and sorrow, no matter 
how heavy, borne in early youth, cast their shadow 
over all after-years ? What a vast deal a healthy man 
can f get over !' True, as beautiful, are the words of 
Philip van Artevelde, in Mr. Taylor's noble play : — 

Well, well, — she's gone, 
And I have tamed my sorrow. Pain and grief 
Are transitory things, no less than joy, 
And though they leave us not the men we were, 
Yet they do leave us. You behold me here, 
A man bereaved, with something of a blight 
Upon the early blossoms of his life, 
And its first verdure, — having not the less 
A living root, and drawing from the earth 
Its vital juices, from the air its powers : 
And surely as man's health and strength are whole, 
His appetites re-germinate, his heart 
Re-opens, and his objects and desires 
Shoot up renewed.* 

How many twice-married men and women can 
testify to the truth of Artevelde's philosophy ! Out of 
a romance, it takes very much to kill a man — unless, 
indeed, consumption has marked him from his birth, 
and his physical constitution lacks the reacting spring. 
But Mr. Smith has made his hero feel and act just as 
it was fit under the conditions given. He became a 
solitary dreamer -> and though feeling the attraction 

* Taylor's Philip van Artevelde^ Second Part, Act iii. Scene ii. 



] 06 Thorndale ; 



or 



which draws the moth to the flame, yet at vacation 
times, instead of going to Sutton Manor, he betook 
himself to Wales or Cumberland, to * read.' There he 
read, thought, wrote, destroyed. He mused deeply on 
the constitution of society : he longed for a time when 
manual labour should not be deemed inconsistent with 
refinement and intelligence. But he found his theory 
crumble at the touch of fact : — 

As I marched triumphantly along, I came to a field where 
men were ploughing. I had often watched the ploughman as he 
steps on steadily, holding the share down in its place in the soil, 
and felt curious to try the experiment myself. This time, as the 
countryman who approached me had a good-natured aspect, I 
asked him to let me take his place within the stilts. He did so. I 
did not give him quite the occasion for merriment which I saw he 
anticipated ; I held down the share, and kept it in its due posi- 
tion. But I had no conception of the effort it required — which, 
at least, it cost me. When I resigned my place, my arms 
trembled, my hands burned, my brain throbbed ; the whole frame 
was shaken. And something, too, was shaken in the framework 
of my speculations. The feasibility of uniting with labours such 
as these much of the culture we call intellectual, was not so clear 
to me as it was an hour ago. I walked along less triumphantly, 
maintaining a sort of prudent silence with myself. 

Thorndale all over ! Easily driven by some little 
jar, even from a cherished purpose or belief. All 
physical constitution again. In the days when manual 
labour and mental cultivation are combined, men like 
Thorndale must be watchmakers and printers : men 
with more bone and sinew must go to field-work. But 
who does not remember the diary of Elihu Burritt, 
when teaching himself half-a-dozen languages, with its 
constantly-recurring entries of ' Forged twelve hours 



The Conflict of Opinions. 107 

to-day' — 'Forged fourteen hours to-day' — the brawny 
blacksmith, with his fore-hammer and his Hebrew 
lexicon side by side ? 

Very frankly and without reserve, Thorndale shows 
us how his opinions on society swayed to and fro. He 
went to see Manchester, and mourned to think how, 
c for -leave to live in habitations, where air and light, 
beauty and fragrance, are shut out for ever, men and 
women are toiling as no other animal on the face of 
the earth toils.' And, caring little for conventional 
proprieties, he sits down in London on the steps of a 
church — it was in Regent Street — amid the offscourings 
of the population, and contemplated society from this 
new point of view. It looked very different ! He 
heard the stifled mutterings of the deadly hate which 
the very lowest class bear to those above them. The 
ground underneath us, in truth, is mined : the mine is 
charged. Is not the hatred naturall We do not ask 
whether it be right. 

Without a doubt, we of the pavement, if we had our will, 
would stop those smooth-rolling chariots, with their liveried 
attendants (how we hate those clean and well-fed lackies !), 
would open the carriage-door and bid the riders come down to 
us ! — come down to share — good heaven ! what ? — our ruffianage, 
our garbage, the general scramble, the general filth. 

Walking another day down Regent Street, he passes 
an open carriage standing at a shop door. Seated alone 
in it is — Winifred ! He avoids recognition, and hurries 
away. Soon he slackens his speed — stops — turns, walks 
back, slowly, rapidly, breathlessly ! The carriage was 
gone. True to the life ! 



io8 ThorndaJe ; or, 

He left Oxford at last, and returned to Sutton 
Manor. ' It was the old story of the moth and the 
flame.' He resolved that for a month his heart should 
have its way; and rowing with Winifred on the river, 
wandering with her in the shrubbery, watching the sun 
go down, he had his c month of elysium.' All his 
philosophy was in those days full of hope. He 
wondered at the greatness of the human capacity for 
happiness. At length he broke hurriedly away, and 
hastened to Loch Lomond. We have already seen 
how he returned, and with what result. 

Then he became a wanderer. He tells us he never 
ceased to think, but c a despondency crept from his life 
into his philosophy.' He went to Germany, Switzer- 
land, Italy — the accustomed route — and learned to 
appreciate the diversity there is in human life. On the 
banks of the Lake of Lucerne he met his Utopian 
friend, Clarence, whom he had known at Oxford ; and 
they spent long days in varied talk together. Clarence 
dwelt much upon the misery of the better or the 
middle classes. He thought it exceeds that of the 
poor wretches on the Regent Street steps. What 
ceaseless and life-wearing anxiety and care there are 
in the hearts of most educated men ! Clarence did 
not wonder that men go mad. As life goes against 
them, as the income proves insufficient, as the expenses 
increase, as impending calamity ever jars miserably 
upon the shaken nerves, and as the mind is day by day 
racked by ceaseless fears, the only wonder is that 
Reason does not oftener forsake her seat, totter, and 
fall! 



The Conflict of Opinions, 109 

On some futile pretence of seeing his friend, 
Luxmore, the poet, Thorndale returned to England. 
Luxmore had published, and failed. Thorndale found 
him in a Special Pleader's office, studying for the bar. 
Luxmore held steadily to his books of Practice, till, in 
an evil hour (he had parted with all his poets), he 
bought at a stall a cheap edition of Shelley. It wakened 
the old spirit. He would emigrate. He would clear 
the forest and the jungle. He would grow corn by the 
Mississippi. But he must see the South American 
mountains first ; and so he sailed for Rio Janeiro. 
Thorndale greatly doubted to the last whether he had 
ever £ worked his way round ' to the farm he had talked 
of. Luxmore's character and career are ably and skil- 
fully sketched ; but we cannot say that we are espe- 
cially struck by the specimens given of his poetry. 

In the great steamer, as it lay ofF Southampton, 
Thorndale bade his friend farewell. He had loved 
him, he tells us, as a brother, and an elder brother. 
Thorndale's pliant nature was plastic in those robust 
hands. Sadly depressed, he betook himself to a little 
cottage at Shanklin, once more alone but for the old 
companion — the box of books. It was Thorndale's 
especial misfortune that, with a native craving for some 
attached companion to dwell under the same roof, he 
was by circumstances always doomed to days of soli- 
tude. But a new interest now arose. Symptoms of 
disease, disregarded in the excitement of the last days 
with Luxmore, now forced themselves on his attention. 
Some business matter compelled him to write to his 
uncle, thus informing his relations at Sutton Manor, for 



no Thorn dale ; 



or. 



the first time, that he had returned to England. Kind 
messages and regrets came in reply : "Winifred espe- 
cially chiding him for his unsocial habits. It seemed 
' a wild strain of irony.' Yet the few lines she wrote 
wakened old feelings, never quite asleep. Surely she 
would come and see the poor invalid ? So strong did 
the impression grow, that, catching sight one day of a 
female figure in the garden, bending over the flowers, 
he felt sure it must be Winifred ; and watched breath- 
lessly, with violently-beating heart, till she turned her 
face, and the delusion was dispelled. Still, for days he 
cherished the vain expectation that she would come, 
and restore him, by her very presence, to life, and hope, 
and faith. That was all he needed. 

If I could see thee, 'twould be well with me ! 

Now there came consultations with this and that 
great physician : and soon the death-warrant decidedly 
expressed. Then was a first moment of confusion 
and agony ; and then followed an indescribable calm. 
It was now all smooth water before him. He betook 
himself to his last retreat at Villa Scarpa; but he 
did not see Winifred before he left England for ever. 
Kind letters followed him from her mother. Lady 
Moberly would come over to take care of him, with a 
doctor in either hand. Of course she never came. 
And now the last days are gliding over swiftly: — 

The day is never long. I have, indeed, ceased to take note of 
the measurement of time. One hour is more genial than another ; 
thought flows more rapidly, or these damaged lungs breathe some- 
what more freely at one time than another : but where the 



The Conflict of Opinions. 1 1 1 

present hour stands in the series which makes up day and night, 
what the clock reports of the progress of time, I have ceased to 
ask myself. There is but one hour that the bell has to strike 
for me. 

Yet life is not quite over, even after Thorndale has 
found his last harbour of refuge. Present incident 
proves the completion of past remembrance. The 
Third Book of the manuscript volume is entitled, 
Cyril-, or j the Modern Cistercian. 

In watching a little point of beach which was visible 
from his terrace, Thorndale had often been struck by 
the figure of a youthful monk, wearing the white habit 
of the Cistercian order, who passed slowly by the sea- 
margin, and sometimes paused in thought. Thorndale 
had constructed a whole theory of his thinking and 
history, and began to feel towards him as towards a 
friend. At length, in his ride, Thorndale passed two 
monks, one of whom had sunk exhausted by the way- 
side. He conveyed the monk to the monastery in his 
carriage, and recognised in him the Cistercian so often 
watched. A further surprise awaited him. On enter- 
ing the Cistercian's cell, he recognised in him an old 
acquaintance — Cyril. Cyril had entered the Roman 
Catholic Church, through the gate of the monastery. 
He had sought a peaceful, pious, and harmonious life 
within those walls; and he assured Thorndale that he 
had found all he sought. His history had been a 
tragical one. Brought up in a pious family, he had 
been assailed by sceptical doubts. His father was an 
enthusiast for reformatory punishment. The house 
was full of books on the subject. And from these 



1 1 2 Thorndale ; or, 

Cyril imbibed the notion that one grand end of all 
punishment should be the reformation of the criminal 
himself. To punish for mere revenge was unchristian 
and irrational. How, then, of God's punishments in- 
flicted in a future life ? The pious father appeared to 
claim for the human legislator principles more noble 
and enlightened than those he attributed to the Divine. 
Eternal punishment aims not at the reformation of the 
guilty. Cyril was plunged into all the miseries of 
doubt. And brought up in the conviction that unbelief 
was the extremest sin, his anguish was indescribable. 
He became restless, gloomy, morose. And so, leaving 
Oxford, Thorndale left him. Thorndale was at Dol- 
gelly, in Wales, when he learned that Cyril was at 
Barmouth, and rode over to see him. He met him, 
just come off the water. Cyril's joy at the meeting 
was extreme. They sat cheerfully down to supper. 
Cyril never had been so gay. At length, absently, he 
drew from the pocket of his rough great coat a large 
mass of iron, the fluke of an old anchor. At the sight 
of it, suddenly recollecting himself, he burst into a 
violent flood of tears. He confessed to his friend that 
an accident only had prevented him from throwing 
himself into the sea, during the sail from which he had 
just returned. He had gone out with that purpose, 
driven to it by his agony of doubt, and (strange as it 
may seem) by the fear of death. His fear of death 
was such, that he longed to make a plunge and have it 
over. And amid all the misery of his scepticism, he 
says, surely with sad truth, — 

I am quoted by my family and my friends as a monster of 



The Conflict of Opinions. 113 

impiety and guilt. I am frowned upon, avoided, expostulated 
with — and pious ministers reprove me — for intellectual pride ! 

We can well believe that a pious father or mother, 
deeply loving their son, would yet rather see him laid 
in his coffin than see him turn doubtful of their own 
simple faith. What malady makes a breach so total — 
what leads to a doom so fearful — as unbelief? But 
let it be remembered that in many cases it is a malady : 
a disease for which a man is no more guilty than for 
consumption or for typhus. No doubt there is a 
wilful blindness, a preference of falsehood to truth, a 
flippant, hateful self-sufficiency, in the case of some: 
and let these be held responsible. But surely there are 
earnest spirits, battling for the truth — shedding tears of 
blood because they cannot believe, though they long to 
do so. Let us be thankful that in almost every such 
case the disease is a temporary one. It will wear 
away. ' Unto the upright there ariseth light in dark- 
ness.' Unbelief is a crisis which must be passed 
through by the thinking human mind, as certainly as 
measles and hooping-cough by the human body. Of 
course a blockhead, who never thinks at all, will not 
be troubled by it. The humble and earnest man 
comes out of it, with a faith grounded so deeply that it 
can never be shaken more. Let us pity, then, the 
young doubter: let us aid him by God's blessing: let 
us not accuse him, and so perhaps drive him to despair. 
The guilty unbelief is that of the man who knows in 
his conscience that he would rather not believe. There 
is another kind of want of faith which the Almighty 
will not condemn. It is that which utters the creed 



H4 ThorndaJe ; or, 

and the prayer together : c Lord, I believe : help Thou 
mine unbelief.' 

The next morning Thorndale and Cyril were to have 
breakfasted together. But when Thorndale went to 
his lodgings, he was gone, without a word ; and they 
met no more till they met in the Cistercian monastery. 

After this meeting, Cyril sometimes visited Thorn- 
dale at the Villa Scarpa. Thorndale did not seek any 
account of the process by which the youth who could 
believe nothing, had passed into the monk who believed 
everything. No doubt it would have been the usual 
story of reaction commenced, and then a positive 
appetite for belief growing upon the mind. In any case, 
belief had brought Cyril peace and rest. .And the 
doctrine of purgatory had been to him a favourable dis- 
tinction of the Church of Rome. It represented a 
reformatory nature even in punishment beyond the 
grave ; and the young enthusiast fancied that a special 
revelation had been vouchsafed to him by the Saviour, 
that every soul that God has made should in some way 
be saved at last. And coming not frequently, stealing 
quietly up to the terrace with his pax vobiscum^ Cyril 
visited Thorndale to the last. But Thorndale saw the 
Cistercian on the strip of beach no more. 

Cyril had felt the difficulty which most thoughtful 
men must feel, as to what conception should be formed 
of God : — 

How' personify the Infinite ? I said to myself. Does not the 
notion of personality itself imply contrast, limitation, and must 
not a person be therefore Finite ? or how personify at all, but by 
borrowing from the creature, and framing an ideal out of human 
qualities ? 



The Conflict of Opinions. 1 1 5 

At one moment my conception of God seemed grand anr\ dis- 
tinct, and my whole soul was rilled and satisfied with it. Sud- 
denly I was startled and abashed when I traced in it too plainly 
the features of humanity. These I hastened to obliterate ; and 
the whole image was then fading into terrible obscurity. I re- 
member one day our common friend Luxmore saying, in his wild 
poetic manner, that the ordinary imagination of God was but the 
shadow of a man thrown upwards — the image of our best and 
greatest, seen larger on the concave of the sky. 

We remark upon this, that Luxmore, after all, was 
only stating in a poetical and somewhat exaggerated 
form, a great and fundamental religious truth. We are 
' created in the image of God : ' and it is only because 
there is something in us which resembles God, that we 
are able to form any conception of Him and His character. 
But for this we could no more conceive of God's 
attributes than a blind man, who never saw, can con- 
ceive of colour. We, of course, are fallen creatures; 
and our blurred and blotted qualities bear only the 
faintest and farthest likeness to that Divine Image in 
which we were made. And further, it is true enough 
that when we kneel down to pray, we should only dis- 
tract and dishearten ourselves by trying to form a con- 
ception of a Being in whose nature there are such 
elements as eternity, omnipresence, omnipotence, in- 
visibility ; and by trying to feel that we are addressing 
Him. But was Luxmore entirely wrong when he said 
that the Hearer of prayer, to our weak minds, draws 
personality from a sublimed humanity? It is not a 
fable, that we know the picture of a man's character 
and life set out in a certain simple story, Glad Tidings 
to all to whom it comes : a man towards whom we can 



Ii6 Thorndale; or, 

feel kindly sympathy and warm affection: a human 
being like ourselves : and we are told that He is ' the 
image of the invisible God : ' that when we picture 
Him to our hearts, we picture God — softened, but not 
degraded. We can see c the glory of God in the face 
of Jesus Christ:' and in praying to God, we can feel 
as though the kind face were bent over us as we 
pray, — as though we were telling of our wants and 
sorrows to that kind and gentle heart. Do we desire 
to think clearly to whom we speak when we pray ? 
We are chilled and overwhelmed when we think of 
infinite space and infinite time : it is not to an aggre- 
gate of such qualities as these that we can address 
heartfelt pleading. Let us think we are speaking to 
a sympathising Man ; and child-like, we can bend 
down our head upon the knee of Jesus of Nazareth, 
and breathe into his ear the story of our wants and 
woes. We have all that the grossest idolatry ever 
gave of clear conception ; and yet our worship is not 
degraded, but sublimed. 

Not so pleasing is the Fourth Book of Thorndale's 
manuscript, entitled Seckendorf or the Spirit of Denial. 
Long ago, in Switzerland, Thorndale found Seckendorf 
in the studio of Clarence, the Utopian artist. Secken- 
dorf was a tall man, with grey hair and keen grey 
eyes, and advanced in years. He was by birth a 
German baron ; but he was known in England as 
Doctor Seckendorf, an eminent physician and physi- 
ologist. In philosophy, he was just the opposite of 
Clarence : sceptical, sarcastic, hoping nothing. His 
philosophy was c firm as a rock, and as hard and 



The Conflict of Opinions. I r 7 

barren.' He held that what is excellent never can be 
common, because 'higher excellence is greater com- 
plication, and its manifestation must be more restricted, 
because a larger number of antecedent conditions are 
necessary for that manifestation.' The Utopian's 
' good time coming ' of universal goodness and happi- 
ness could therefore never be. And Thorndale thought 
out a sad induction of facts in corroboration of the 
thing : 

There is more sea than land ; three-fourths of the globe are 
covered with salt water. 

There is more barren land than fertile ; much is sheer desert, or 
hopeless swamp $ great part wild arid steppes, or land that can 
only be held in cultivation by incessant toil. 

Where nature is most prolific, there is more weed and jungle 
than fruit and flower. 

Of the animal creation, the lowest orders are by far the most 
numerous. The infusoria, and other creatures that seem to enjoy 
no other sensations than what are immediately connected with 
food and movement (if even these), far surpass all others in this 
respect. The tribes of insects are innumerable j the mammalia 
comparatively few. 

Of the human inhabitants of the earth, the ethnologist tells us 
that the Mongolian race is the most numerous, which is not cer- 
tainly the race in which the noblest forms of civilisation have ap- 
peared. As in the tree there is more leaf than fruit, so in the 
most advanced nation of Europe there are more poor than rich, 
more ignorant than wise, more automatic labourers, the mere 
creatures of habit, than reasoning and reflective men. 

We do not know whether the celebrated anonymous 
work, entitled The Plurality of Worlds^ was published 
before Thorndale's death. If he had read it, he might 
have gathered from its eloquent and startling pages one 



i r 8 Tborndale ; or, 

instance more for his induction. He might have stated 
that there seems strong reason to believe that of all the 
orbs which have (if we may say so) blossomed in 
immensity, only one has arrived at fruit : that this earth 
is the only inhabited world in all the universe. The 
Creator works with a lavish hand. But as his works 
grow nobler, they grow fewer. Scarcity, we all know, 
makes a thing more valuable : the converse holds as 
truly, that value makes a thing scarce. 

The second chapter in this Fourth Book treats 
ingeniously and strikingly of the power of money, and 
also furnishes proof that Thorndale, like many men of 
his make, was not minutely accurate. The chapter is 
called The Silver Shillings and over and over again we 
have the silver shilling repeated, as the type of money. 
Seckendorf tells us where he got the name ; it was 
from c a poem by one Phillips, " On the Silver Shil- 
ling." We know, of course, what Seckendorf is 
referring to ; but there is no such poem as that he 
quotes. Most men who are tolerably well read in the 
poetry of the seventeenth century, have at least heard 
of John Phillips's poem, The Splendid Shillings an 
amusing parody of the style of Milton : it sets out 
thus : — 

Happy the man, who, void of care and strife, 
In silken or in leathern purse, retains 
A Splendid Shilling: he nor hears with pain, 
New oysters cried, nor sighs for cheerful ale. 

Our shortening space forbids our offering our readers 
any account of Seckendorf s career, which Mr. Smith 
sketches with great liveliness and interest j or our 



The Conflict of Opinions. I \ 9 

noticing the topics which were discussed in council by 
Thorndale, Clarence, and Seckendorf. Seckendorf 
thought there is a general movement in England 
towards the Roman Catholic Church ; and that it is 
not unlikely that the ragged urchin who is chalking up 
6 No Popery ' on the walls of London, may live to see 
High Mass performed in St. Paul's Cathedral. He 
maintained that fear is the root of all religion ; the 
unseen root, even in the happiest Christians : that c the 
pillars of heaven are sunk in hell.' We differ from 
him. We think that love and hope, rather than fear, 
are the guiding influences in the Christian life. We 
believe that though a great fear may be the thing that 
wakens a man up from total unconcern about religion, 
yet that the race once entered on, he treads c the way 
to Zion with his face thitherward ;' — looking towards 
the home he seeks ; and drawn by the hope before, 
rather than driven by the fear behind him. 

Thorndale's Fifth Book is called Clarence ; or, the 
Utopian. As the invalid was wearing down from day 
to day, one morning he was sitting in the gardens of the 
Villa Reale. There a group drew his attention — a 
father, and, as it seemed, his little daughter. The 
father was evidently an Englishman \ the little girl, 
with fair complexion and light hair, had the dark 
eye of the Italian. Thorndale recognised his old 
friend Clarence ; but with characteristic reserve, 
he shrunk from making himself known. But he 
looked with kind feeling upon the little child \ and 
mused, as Dr. Arnold had done before him, on a 
child's power to reawaken a parent's flagging interest 



120 Thorndale ; or, 

in life. The beaten track is no longer monotonous ; 
the circle of the year looks new. Thorndale thus 
mused : — 

What beautiful things there are in life ! joys that have come 
down to us pure and unstained from the times of the patriarchs. 
It is to me an eternal miracle to see the same roses year after year 
bloom as freshly as they did in Paradise. Plant this wedded hap- 
piness, plant these roses, in every rood of ground, ye who would 
improve the aspect of this world ! but do not think you can 
change a single leaf of the plant itself. 

Thorndale's idea had been anticipated. James Hed- 
derwick, a pleasing but overlooked poet, thus excuses 
a new poem on the old theme of Love : — 

The theme is old — even as the flowers are old, 

That sweetly showed 
Their silver bosses and bright-budding gold 

Through Eden's sod ; — 
And still peep forth through grass and garden mould, 

As fresh from God ! 

Happily Thorndale and Clarence met at last. The 
little girl, compassionating the wan look of the con- 
sumptive, offered him another day some flowers. 
Clarence followed her ; and suddenly recognising his 
old companion, ' burst into tears like a woman.' He 
and his little Julia were afterwards constant visitors at 
the Villa Scarpa ; and all the beauty of the scene, 
which had been paling to the dying man's languid eye, 
suddenly revived. Morning after morning Clarence 
spent, painting the view from Thorndale's terrace. 
Julia was not his daughter; she was his adopted child. 



v^ 



The Conflict of Opinions, 121 

She was the daughter of an exiled Italian patriot who 
had come to England, married an English woman, 
settled down quietly in a little cottage on the borders 
of the New Forest, and supported himself as a sculptor. 
In a chapter called Julia Montini, the story of the 
exile, his wife and child, is related with exquisite grace 
and pathos. Very beautifully did the simple and un- 
taught English girl tell Clarence how, as there gra- 
dually grew upon her the sense of the genius and 
refinement of the man she had married, she feared that 
he would cease to love her, so much above her as he 
was. She read and studied, hoping to make herself 
more worthy of him : but her fear proved idle ; he 
never loved her less. It is indeed something of a dis- 
appointment for a husband to feel there are realms of 
thought to which he has access, but into which a gentle 
and loving wife cannot enter with him : but solitude is 
the penalty which attaches of necessity to elevated 
thought. The man who climbs too high, leaves 
common sympathy behind him. Our readers may 
remember how beautifully the author of In Memoriam 
has anticipated the poor young wife's thoughts and 
fears : — 

He thrids the labyrinth of the mind, 

He reads the secret of the star : 

He seems so near and yet so far : 
He looks so cold : she thinks him kind. 
For him she plays, to him she sings, 

Of early faith and plighted vows ; 

She knows but matters of the house, 
And he, he knows a thousand things. 



12,2 Thorndale ; or, 

Her faith is fixt and cannot move, 
She darkly feels him dark and wise : 
She dwells on him with faithful eyes, 
e I cannot understand : I love. 1 

Suddenly the sculptor and his wife died of fever ; 
and Clarence found the little child all alone in the 
deserted cottage. The quiet home, that had looked so 
happy, was obliterated at a stroke. Is it a morbid 
thing, if we find it for ourselves impossible to look at 
any happy home, without picturing to our mind a day 
sure to come ? We look at the cottage in the sun- 
shine, amid its clustering roses, and with children's 
voices by. Ah, some day there will be an unwonted 
bustle — straw flying about the neat walks — empty, 
echoing rooms — the children gone — and the peaceful 
home broken up for ever. It is well for those who 
can feel themselves secure, even if they be not safe. 

And now Clarence and Julia soothe the dying man's 
solitude. Thorndale lies on his sofa under the acacia- 
tree ; Clarence stands near, painting ; Julia is busy 
gardening. And as Thorndale's hand turns too feeble 
to hold the pen, Clarence takes up his abandoned 
manuscript volume, and fills the remaining leaves with 
his own confession of faith. To notice that at all 
adequately, would demand an article of itself; and we 
shall not attempt to do so. But we see our last of 
Thorndale as we have just described him. We leave 
him, now with very little to come of life, under the 
acacia-tree. There is now only the stillness of expec- 
tation, upon that terrace that looks down upon the bay. 

We should have been happier, we confess, had we 



The Conflict of Opinions. 123 

left him with something better to support him at the 
last than philosophy, whether cynical or Utopian. 
Surely he had within himself, too sacred for common 
talk, a hope and a belief not to be paraded for Secken- 
dorf's sarcasm ! Surely, when, in the last hours, the 
pictures of childhood came back, the perplexed and 
tempest-driven man was again the child that prayed by 
the little white bedside. We do not care if our 
readers should complain that the sermon peeps through 
the article — that the disguise of the reviewer does not 
quite conceal the gown and band. Let it be so : but 
in treating of such grave matters as those which this 
book suggest, we could not have forgiven ourselves 
had we failed to notice the book's essential defect. 
Holding the belief which we hold, we could not have 
written of the mystery of life, without reference to that 
which alone can read it. 



1*4 



IV 



JAMES MONTGOMERY.* 



WE sincerely regret that we are compelled to 
begin our notice of so amiable a man and so 
pleasing a poet as James Montgomery, by speaking in 
terms of decided protest of the manner in which his 
biography has been written. This biography is the 
most striking specimen of book-making with which, 
even in these days of preposterously extended bio- 
graphies, we have happened to become acquainted. 
The story of a quiet life singularly devoid of incident 
has been spun out into seven closely-printed volumes, 
by the pure incompetence and impertinence of its 
writers. It was quite fit that some permanent record 
of Montgomery's life should be prepared : his poetry 
has real merit and distinctive characteristics which entitle 
him to such a memorial ; though had the life of Mr. 
Popkins run a similar course, most assuredly it would 

* Memoirs of the Life and Writings of James Montgomery ; including 
Selections from his Correspondence, Remains in Prose and Verse, and Conver- 
sations on various Subjects. By John Holland and James Everett. Seven 
Volumes. London: 1854-6. 

The Poetical Works of James Montgomery. Collected by himself. In 
Four Volumes. London: 1849. 



James Montgomery. 125 

not have been worth recording. Still, one of the seven 
volumes we have toiled through might properly enough 
have been given to a memoir, written with moderate 
discrimination, of the author of The World before the 
Flood, The Pelican Island^ and The Common Lot. But 
Messrs. Holland and Everett had for once got hold of 
a subject likely to have some interest for educated 
people, and they resolved to make the most of it; and, 
if possible, to associate their own utterly insignificant 
names with the respectable name of Montgomery. 
Mr. Everett gives us, at the beginning of the third 
volume, a picture of his own peculiar features ; and 
Mr. Holland, if possible a more singular-looking indi- 
vidual, figures at the beginning of the fifth, in one of 
those white neckcloths with long limp ends which 
are indissolubly associated with the memory of Mr. 
Stiggins. The characteristics of the biography are 
faithfully mirrored in these two countenances, so redo- 
lent of self-conceit and vulgarity. We do not hesitate 
to say that Messrs. Holland and Everett are wholly 
incapable of writing a biography. Their main deter- 
mination in this work appears to have been to cover as 
many pages as possible. It seems to have been Mr. 
Holland's system to cram himself from some cheap 
and popular manual, and then, with the information 
thus easily acquired, to come down upon Montgomery, 
and note down the ' conversations on various subjects ' 
which ensued. Mr. Holland, of course, is the great 
man in most of these ; and he has preserved them 
quite in the Boswell style. We have abundance of 
such lively and memorable dialogues as the following 



126 James Montgomery. 

c imaginary conversation:' — Holland — c Sir, did you 
ever see a whale ? ' Montgomery — e No, I never 
saw a whale.' 

Whenever Montgomery said anything particularly 
weak and silly (which we regret to find he often did), 
Mr. Holland hastened to chronicle it as a valuable 
relic. Montgomery had a tendency, it appears, to 
write extremely long and very prosy, not to say 
twaddling, letters ; and an immense number of these is 
given, almost all possessing not the slightest interest. 
Then Montgomery was for many years editor of a 
Sheffield newspaper ; and in that capacity, as Mr. 
Holland tells us, ' the great and important events which 
have been significantly called " The Wars of the 
French Revolution," were consecutively chronicled 
and commented upon by him ; ' and of course this is 
good reason why in his biography all these c great and 
important events ' should be chronicled and commented 
upon again. Montgomery was accustomed to go about 
speechifying at Sunday-school and Bible Society meet- 
ings j and no doubt all these speeches served a useful 
purpose at the time ; but surely there was no occasion 
to preserve a great number of them in his Life, the 
more especially as they have really no merit at all save 
that of earnestness and simplicity. But the biographers 
have thought fit to put on record a vast deal of the 
washy stuff" which the good man was wont in his failing 
days to talk in the vestries of dissenting meeting- 
houses, and at Sheffield local charities. 

We have no doubt at all that Messrs. Holland and 
Everett thought they were producing a book very like 



James Montgomery. izj 

Mr. Forster's delightful Life of Goldsmith. They ex- 
plain that it is their purpose to set forth the c Life and 
Times of James Montgomery;' and accordingly we 
have nearly as much about Montgomery's friends 
(Messrs. Holland and Everett being always in the 
foreground), as about Montgomery himself. But un- 
happily, all these friends appear to have been the most 
wearisome and uninteresting of mortals. At the first 
glance, we might be surprised that Montgomery did 
not choose acquaintances of a different stamp ; but 
the fact ceases to be remarkable when we remember 
that till late in life his position in society was not such 
as to afford him any selection ; and when we discern 
in his character many indications of such weakness 
and silliness as prepare us to believe that he would 
take a pleasure in being surrounded by toadies and 
flatterers. No doubt he found such in Messrs. Holland 
and Everett : though the former in the preface to this 
work insinuates a graceful compliment to himself and 
his fit coadjutor, in the statement that ' the biography 
of such a man demands some literary and religious 
qualifications resembling his own.' Mr. Holland's 
grammar is imperfect ; still, the meaning of the sen- 
tence may be gathered. And it does really appear 
that Montgomery was on a footing of intimacy with 
these two men : Mr. Holland tells us that rarely a 
week, generally only a day or two, passed without 
their meeting. And for many years before Mont- 
gomery died, Messrs. Holland and Everett were accu- 
mulating materials for this valuable work. Through 
all this period the purpose c was never lost sight of : ' 



128 James Montgomery. 

and we are told that the poet tacitly approved it. ' To 
suppose that he himself had no suspicion of such a 
design, especially amidst the unguarded conversation 
of later years, would be to attribute to him the absence 
of even an ordinary degree of perspicacity.'* And 
the result of the entire process is before us in these 
seven volumes. The stupidity of Messrs. Holland 
and Everett is such, that they seem really to think 
that they are magnifying their friend, when they set 
him before us as such a weak, twaddling, over- 
sensitive, and silly person, that we heartily regret we 
ever read his Life — written, at least, by such incapable 
hands. 

The book sets out with a history of the noble 
family of Montgomerie through the chivalrous ages : 
the reason for introducing this in the Life of Mont- 
gomery being, that he was not in any way connected 
with that family. His parents were Irish : and they 
came to reside at Irvine, in Ayrshire, so immediately 
before the poet's birth, that he was accustomed to say 
that c he had very narrowly escaped being an Irishman.' 
But Eglinton Castle, the residence of the Earl of 
Eglinton, is within a few miles of Irvine : the name 
of the Eglinton family is Montgomerie ; and accord- 
ingly the biographer tells us that c there seems nothing 
very improbable in the supposition that he may have 
had a common progenitor with that illustrious branch 
of the family.' But Montgomery himself, when asked 

* Mr. Holland's mind is evidently not metaphysical, nor are his expres- 
sions precise. The absence of a quality is not generally regarded as an 
attribute. But this is a trifle. 



James Montgomery. i zg 

to mention any of his relations, gave a list of names 
less known to fame : 

Holland — Did you ever know any of your relations of that 
name ? [Montgomerie.] Montgomery — No ; our relations were 
the Spences, the M'Mullins, and the Blackleys. 

It is really too bad that one 'than whom,' Mr. 
Holland tells us, c there did not exist an individual of 
any "celebrity" who was less of a tuft-hunter, or 
who so really recognised and habitually acted upon a 
well-known dictum^ that Christian is the highest 
style of man,'* should be made ridiculous by his 
biographers' snobbish attempt to claim kindred for 
him with a noble family. 

The poet's father was a Moravian preacher; ac- 
cordingly, we are favoured with a history of the 
Moravians, their doctrines, and persecutions. The 
most remarkable circumstance about this primitive 
people is their odd manner of contracting marriages. 
It is decided by lot what ' brother ' shall marry such 
a ' sister : ' and this system has been submitted to 
for several centuries. f Montgomery told a story as 
to a certain Mr. Hutton, a great man among the 
Moravians : 

George III. was fond of him ; and on one occasion the King, 
who liked a joke, said, in his dry way, * Mr. Hutton, I am told 
that you Moravians do not select your wives, but leave it to your 
ministers to choose for you — is it so ?' i Yes, please your Ma- 
jesty j marriages amongst the Brethren are contracted, as your 
Majesty will perceive, after the fashion of royalty.'' 

* Preface to vol. vii. p. 8. The typographical peculiarities are Mr, 
Holland's. f Vol. i. p. 22. 

K 



130 James Montgomery. 

The specimens which are preserved of Montgo- 
mery's bon mots are such, that it is clear that had 
Sydney Smith ever come in contact with him, that 
distinguished wit would have met his match. We 
give some witticisms, culled with care : — 

As Montgomery never wore any trinket, jewel, or personal 
ornament of that kind, we were amused one day by his exhibit- 
ing on his finger a galvanic ring (such as were then common, 
being made of a rim of zinc and copper), archly remarking, 'that 
as it had been f laced there by a lady, he dared not remove it I ' 

June 4, 1822. Mr. Everett accompanied Montgomery on an 
excursion to Mansfield. The Hope coach left Sheffield at half- 
past seven in the morning — an early hour for the poet. He was 
however ready to the minute 5 and watching the guard place a 
large watch in its receptacle, ' There,"" says he, ' is his time, locked 
up like a turnspit dog in a wheel, to run its round, and do its <work /' 

Then, for an example of wit and presence of mind 
conjoined : — 

Mr. Robert Montgomery, from Woolwich, while walking out 
with the poet, came suddenly upon a field of flax in full flower — 
beautifully blue. ' Brother, what sort of corn is that ?' inquired 
the stranger. ' Such corn as your shirt is made of! ' was the 
prompt reply. 

On one occasion, Mr. Holland 

was accosted by a gentleman, sotto voce, with the startling en- 
quiry, ' Do you know that Mr. Montgomery is married ? ' 
' Certainly not,' was the reply ; 'why do you put such a ques- 
tion V ' Because, 1 said the gentleman, ' there is a letter in 
existence which I am told proves the fact.' That letter is before 
us : it begins thus — ' My dear friend — In a gloomy humour, I 
wrote the preceding trifle a few days ago. You will learn from 
it a secret, which I have hitherto withheld even from you and ail 
my friends in Sheffield, namely that I am married ! ' 



James Montgomery. 131 

To cut short Mr. Holland's story, the trifle was 
a copy of very poor verses, in which Montgomery 
mentions that he was married to the Muse. In such 
brilliant and novel jeux-d'esprit did the worthy man 
indulge. 

Our readers would not forgive us, if we failed to 
record the following remarkable incident : — 

Coming into Mr. Holland's room one day, it was evident that 
something had tickled the poet's fancy. On being asked how he 
was : — Montgomery — e Wait till I have recovered my breath, and 
I will tell you. You have noticed the immense piles of stones 
which your friend, William Lee, the surveyor of highways, has 
laid up yonder for paving the streets ? ' — Holland — * Yes, sir.' — 
Montgomery — ' Well, I was coming along, in a most melancholy 
mood, when the sight of these stones, in connexion with a sudden 
fancy, so amused me, that I think the incident has really done 
me good. I thought that when our surveyor dies, the epitaph 
originally made for Sir John Vanbrugh would, with the alteration 
of a single word, be exactly suitable for the worthy Sheffielder : — 
Lie heavy on him earth, for Lee 
Laid many a heavy load on thee ! ' 

Montgomery, notwithstanding this pleasant sally on the name 
of Mr. Lee, was as ready as any one to admit the value of the 
public services of one through whose official superintendence 
Sheffield might fairly claim to be regarded as one of the best 
paved, as well as the best drained, towns in the kingdom. 

We can recal a parallel instance of wit to Mr. 
Montgomery's jokes, from the writings of Mr. Dickens. 
Mr. Peter Magnus said to Mr. Pickwick, c You ob- 
serve the initials of my name ; P.M. — Post Meridiem ? 
In familiar notes to intimate acquaintances, I occa- 
sionally sign my name " Afternoon." It amuses them, 
Mr. Pickwick.' Mr. Pickwick, we are told, bowed ; 



132 James Montgomery. 

and rather envied the facility with which Mr. Magnus's 
friends could be amused. 

Of the value of Mr. Montgomery's critical opinion 
we are enabled to judge by the following incident. 
Speaking of some preacher of whom we never heard 
before, he said : 

There was, among other striking passages in his prayer, one 
very fine sentiment. 'God save the king, let not his greatness 
perish with him in the dust, but let him be great before thee !' 
That is of the very essence of the sublime ! 

If this be c of the very essence of the sublime,' so, 
we presume, must be the following passage, from a 
leading article written by Montgomery in his news- 
paper, after Napoleon's death : 

He is dead ; Buonaparte is dead ; and nve promised to furnish 
his epitaph. It shall be brief j it shall be the only epitaph worthy 
of him, — 

< BUONAPARTE/ 

his name, as it is written in his mother tongue, and unclipt by 
French flippancy. 

Although it is evident from the biography, passim^ 
that the people of Sheffield, including Montgomery, 
had an idea that their town was in all respects superior 
to any other of modern times, it is pleasing to observe 
that the poet's mind was comparatively free from pro- 
vincial prejudices. We find the following important 
passage in a speech delivered by him at the founding 
of the Sheffield Literary and Philosophical Society, to 
a report of which Messrs. Holland and Everett give 
eleven pages of their book : 



James Montgomery \ 133 

Sir, / have never pretended, nor could I be guilty of such 
sophistry and falsehood as to insinuate that Sheffield can boast of 
poets, historians, and philosophers to rival those of Greece and 
Rome 1 1 ! 

Modest and candid old gentleman ! Still he had 
his faults, for what says Mr. Holland ? 

Posterity will no doubt be a little surprised, should I ever take 
it by the button, and say, * Mr. Montgomery was a smoker ! ' 

And he had a bad habit of throwing his letters 
violently about : 

Montgomery called on Mr. Holland, and placing in his hand 
an envelope ; ' See," said he, ' there is a genuine autograph of 
Wordsworth. That is such a letter as one feels pleasure in 
receiving : not like these', neither of which are worth a farthing, 
in any way ;' at the same time casting the t<wo impertinents vio- 
lently upon the floor, as *we have seen him do zuith similar epistles 
in other instances. 

The fact is important, still the anecdote is incom- 
plete. It was wrong in Mr. Holland to leave us in 
suspense as to whether Montgomery left the i imperti- 
nents ' lying upon his floor, or before leaving picked 
them up and re-pocketed them. 

Notwithstanding the enormous length of this bio- 
graphy, there is a total absence in it of anything 
like clearness and completeness of presentment of the 
life, character, and daily habits of the man. Who- 
ever desires to have a vivid picture of the individual 
Montgomery, must piece it together for himself, from 
detached hints and imperfect statements gathered up 
here and there in unexpected nooks of the huge mass 



134 James Montgomery, 

of verbiage of which these volumes consist. Before 
we go on to sketch out the story of Montgomery's 
life, we should like to give our readers some notion of 
the great features of it during by far the longer part of 
its continuance. 

For nearly fifty years, beginning when he was little 
more than two-and-twenty, Montgomery was editor, 
proprietor, printer, and publisher of the Sheffield Iris 
newspaper. He lived an odd kind of frowsy life, over 
a bookseller's shop, in one of the dirtiest streets of 
Sheffield. He was never married ; but he lived all 
that time with three respectable women, who kept the 
bookseller's shop already mentioned, and whom he 
regarded as his sisters, though they were not in any 
way related to him. We form a very kindly impres- 
sion of them ; and after the smirking impudence of 
Mr. Holland's portrait, we turn with great satisfaction 
to that at the beginning of vol. vi., which shows us the 
pleasant homely features of Sarah Gales. Every even- 
ing, in the company of these worthy individuals, 
Montgomery smoked a single pipe. He was very fond 
of cats : he had always at least one pet of that race, 
which in the evening was wont to leap up into his lap 
and share his tea. From nervousness or indolence, he 
never could shave himself. Unlike most men who 
write much, to whom 

The fair undress, best dress, which cheeks no vein, 

is an essential both of comfort and of progress in their 
work, Montgomery always wrote, at every period of 
his life, when fully dressed in outgoing attire. The 



James Montgomery. 135 

habit was probably acquired in his early days of editor- 
ship, when he sat in a room which opened into the 
shop, and always thought it necessary to appear in 
person to receive advertisements and orders of all 
kinds. He was keenly sensitive to cold, and went 
about shivering in a thick great-coat, even in the dog 
days. He was fairly educated, but had not the faintest 
claim to scholarship. He never was on the Continent , 
and but once in Scotland, and once in Ireland, in the 
last seventy years of his life. His newspaper began 
with a large circulation, being erected on the ruins 
of another put down by Government prosecution ; 
and at first his political views were extreme enough, 
but they became more and more moderate ; he had not 
the push and energy needful for the conduct of a popular 
newspaper, and though his journal — a weekly one — 
was always respectably conducted, its circulation latterly 
grew small. He had no reporter ; he rode about and 
collected accounts in person. He had a feeble frame, 
an over-sensitive mind, spirits almost equally depressed, 
a most sincere and amiable heart. Intense honesty, 
guileless simplicity, humble and unaffected piety, were 
characteristic of James Montgomery. His poetry we 
shall estimate hereafter : his prose was very prosy 
indeed ; his conversation in no way remarkable. In 
his letters and speeches he had an inveterate tendency 
to say everything in the greatest possible number of 
words. He was a true philanthropist ; wealth and 
energy were all he wanted to have been another ' Man 
of Ross.' He was weak, no doubt, in many respects \ 
but we do not wonder that all who knew him loved 



136 James Montgomery, 

him. His poetry breathes a serene and simple piety, 
and he was as good as he wrote. But we have 
gathered from these seven volumes all that is worth 
recording of Montgomery's life, and we proceed to give 
our readers a sketch of it. 

On the coast of Ayrshire, ten miles north of Ayr, 
in a flat, sandy, uninteresting country, stands the ugly 
town of Irvine. There James Montgomery was born, 
on the 4th November, 1771. Much of the Ayrshire 
coast is very bold and striking ; but for miles on either 
side of Irvine, the coast, and the country for a mile or 
two inland, is weary sand. So Montgomery was draw- 
ing on an imperfect recollection when he described his 
native shore as either rugged or romantic : — 

The loud Atlantic ocean, 

On Scotland's rugged breast, 
Rocks, with harmonious motion, 

His weary waves to rest ; 
And gleaming round her emerald isles, 
In all the pomp of sun-set smiles. 
On that romantic shore, 

My parents hailed their first-born boy ; 
A mother's pangs my mother bore, 

My father felt a father's joy.* 

The poet's father, John Montgomery, was born at 
Bally-Kennedy, in a parish bearing the euphonious name 
of Ahoghill, in the county of Antrim. His mother, 
Mary Blackley, was a native of the same place. They 
had four children — three sons, of whom James was the 
eldest, and a daughter, who died before the poet's birth. 

* Poetical Works, vol. ii. p. 1 66. 



James Montgomery. 137 

John Montgomery became a preacher among the 
Moravian Brethren, and was appointed minister of a 
small congregation at Irvine, where he remained for 
several years. The Brethren's church had, and has, 
but few members in Scotland, and after John Mont- 
gomery left Irvine, his congregation became extinct, 
and his humble chapel was turned into a weaver's shop. 
When his more distinguished son, at the age of well- 
nigh fourscore, revisited Irvine, h& went to see the 
chapel where his father had preached. He found it 
thus desecrated — but there he enjoyed a foretaste of 
posthumous fame : he saw a tablet, which had been 
inserted in the wall, bearing an inscription that under 
that roof had been born James Montgomery, the poet. 
And although he had left Scotland with his parents 
at the age of four years, he recognised the features of 
the place. He remembered especially two large stone 
balls at the entrance to the gaol, placed there — he had 
been told — that the heads of malefactors might be 
knocked against them at entering. 

On leaving Irvine, Montgomery's parents settled at 
Grace Hill, a Moravian settlement in the parish of 
Ahoghill ; and here the poet received the first rudiments 
of education from Jemmy McCaffery, the parish school- 
master. When he was seven years old, his father took 
him to Fulneck, in Yorkshire, where were a Moravian 
settlement and school. In 1783, John Montgomery 
and his wife went as missionaries to the West Indies, 
and their two younger sons, Robert and Ignatius, were 
sent to join their brother at the Brethren's school at 
Fulneck. When any Moravian minister devotes himself 



138 James Montgomery. 

to the missionary work, his children are adopted and 
maintained by the brotherhood. 

The Moravian establishment at Fulneck consisted of 
a handsome range of buildings, in a pleasant retired 
situation, and looking upon a rich country. Fulneck 
is about six miles from Leeds. The air is salubrious ; 
and the land attached to the institution, originally a 
tract of rough moorland, has been brought to fertility 
by the labours of* the Brethren. The school was an 
excellent one ; and its fame attracted many pupils whose 
parents were not of the Moravian community. Here 
James Montgomery remained during ten years, c dis- 
tinguished for nothing but indolence and melancholy.' 
His odd appearance and over-sensitive temper made 
him a mark for the ridicule of his more vigorous com- 
panions ; and here he laid the foundation of that 
shrinking, morbid disposition which went with him 
through life. He was very pale, very near-sighted, had 
' an abundant supply of carroty locks,' and a scorbutic 
taint in his blood thus early manifested itself. Robinson 
Crusoe was the work which fired his youthful fancy 5 
though even so innocent a work of fiction was tabooed 
by the stern discipline of the Brotherhood. 

On being interrogated what first led him to court the Muses, 
Montgomery replied, — ' The master one day took several of the 
children out, and read Blair's Grave to them behind a hedge. 
My attention was strongly arrested, and a few lines made a 
powerful impression on my mind. I said to myself, if ever I 
become a poet, I will write something like this. I afterwards 
resolved, oddly enough, that I would write a round poem : this 
notion was perpetually in my head, an idea of round being my 
idea of perfection.' This he illustrated by referring to a glass 



James Montgomery. 139 

globe, which was smooth and entire ; that anything added to it 
might augment its size, but would never add to the perfection of 
its rotundity ; while anything taken from it would be destructive 
of its globular form, and so far of its perfection. c I remember,' 
he said, ' as well as if it was but yesterday, how I leaned upon a 
rail as I stood on some steps at Fulneck, and deeply and silently 
mused in my mind on the commotion which would be produced 
upon the public by the appearance of this round poem.'' 

Montgomery's first poetical efforts were imitations of 
the rude ungrammatical old Moravian hymns. By the 
time he was thirteen, he had filled a book with these. 
His instructors carefully guarded their pupils from con- 
tact with books which they regarded as improper. So 
vigilant were they, that the father of one of the boys 
having sent to the school a volume of selections from 
Milton, Thomson, and Young, consisting, as he sup- 
posed, of some of their finest moral and religious senti- 
ments, it was carefully examined, and pruned of its 
unprofitable passages, before the masters suffered it to 
fall into the hands of the boys. And on reaching them, 
it was found seriously mutilated, many leaves cut 
out, and others in a mangled state. The usual result 
followed from this extreme severity of discipline. 
Montgomery fell in with an extract from Hamlet : — 

We were of course prohibited from reading the entire play ; 
and that very prohibition created in me the most ardent desire to 
see the whole ; nor did I ever rest till I had read it. 

The ten years Montgomery lived at Fulneck were 
spent in monastic seclusion from the world. c I do 
not recollect,' he says ' having once during all that 
time conversed for ten minutes with any person what- 






140 James Montgomery. 

ever, except my companions, our masters, and occa- 
sional Moravian visitors.' There seems to have been 
much simple piety among the children ; an amusing 
example is given : — 

It was customary for the boys of different classes to take tea 
with each other. One day the beverage was changed ; and when 
the boys had all partaken, they formed a circle hand in hand, and 
sung a hymn. One of the least was then placed in the centre 
of the ring, to officiate, in prayer. He knelt down and said, 
* O Lord, bless us little children, and make us very good. We 
thank thee for what we have received. bless this good chocolate 
to us, and give us more of it ! ' 

Notwithstanding the prohibitions of his superiors, 
Montgomery gradually became acquainted with many 
of the English poets. Poetry was his passion thus 
early. Cowper was the first c whole poet ' he had 
seen ; but he did not care for Cowper's poetry ; he 
c thought he could do better himself.' Before he was 
fourteen, he wrote a mock-heroic poem of 1000 lines. 
He began a poem called The World, which he in- 
tended should outvie Milton on his own domain : and 
contemplated a long work on the history of Alfred, in 
a series of Pindaric odes. An event which occurred 
at this time made a great impression on his mind, and 
was often recurred to by him in after years. The 
eccentric Lord Monboddo, on visiting Fulneck, was 
taken by the Moravian bishop to the school, and the 
names of several boys mentioned to him. The old 
judge paid little attention till the bishop said, c Here, 
my Lord, is one of your countrymen.' On this 
Monboddo started, and flourishing a large horsewhip 



James Montgomery. 1 4 r. 

over Montgomery's head, cried out, c I hope he will 
take care that his country shall never be ashamed of him.' 
c This,' said Montgomery, f I never forgot ; nor shall 
I forget it while I live : I have, indeed, endeavoured 
so to act that my country might never have cause to be 
ashamed of me.' m 

The poetic boy became silent and abstracted, to the 
great annoyance of the good Brethren, who had hoped to 
have made him a Moravian minister. The school diary 
contains several unsatisfactory entries about him : Under 
May 2nd, 1787, we find, c Complaints that J. M. was 
not using proper diligence in his studies, and was 
admonished on the subject ;' and 'on July 3rd, c As 
J. M., notwithstanding repeated admonitions, has not 
been more attentive, it was resolved to put him to a 
business, at least for a time.' J. M. was accordingly 
placed with a small shopkeeper at Mirfield, near Ful- 
neck. He remained behind the counter for a year 
and a half, writing poetry and composing music ; and 
finally, on Sunday morning, the 19th June, 1789, he 
ran away, with three-and-sixpence in his pocket. c I 
had just got,' he tells us, c a new suit of clothes, but 
as I had only been a short time with my good master, 
I did not think my little services had earned them. 
I therefore left him in my old ones.' And thus, at 
the age of sixteen, set out James Montgomery to begin 
the world. 

On the evening of the second day he reached the 
hamlet of Wentworth ; and here he conceived a plan 
for recruiting his lessening finances. He knew that 
Earl Fitzwilliam's residence was near. Having fairly 



j 42 James Montgomery. 

copied out a little poem he had composed, he proceeded 
to Wentworth Park, and after waiting a while, espied 
his lordship riding through his domain. With great 
agitation he presented his poem to the kind-hearted 
nobleman, who read it upon the spot, and forthwith pre- 
sented a golden guinea to the gratified author. In a 
few days Montgomery was established as shopman to 
Mr. Hunt, who kept c a general store ' at the pretty 
village of Wath, near Rotherham, where he sold ' flour, 
shoes, cloth, groceries, and almost every description of 
hard and soft ware.' The kind brethren at Fulneck 
sought to persuade the prodigal to return to them, but 
Montgomery was resolute, and at Wath he remained 
a year, 'remarkably grave, serious, and silent,' — 'a 
slender youth, shrinking from the cold, and still more 
from contact with the villagers generally, who regarded 
him with a mysterious interest, as being sure " no vulgar 
boy.'" 

At Wath, Montgomery became acquainted with a 
neighbouring bookseller, who encouraged his taste for 
literature. At the end of a year he sent a volume of 
manuscript poetry to Mr. Harrison* the publisher, of 
Paternoster Row, and a week after followed in person. 
W^e have no particulars of his first journey to London, 
but we are told that Mr. Harrison gave Montgomery 
a situation in his shop, though he declined to print the 
young poet's volume. Montgomery retained his quiet 
disposition. While in London he never entered a 
theatre, nor ever visited the British Museum ; ' he had 
no curiosity,' he tells us, ' for such things.' He first 
saw himself in print in an Edinburgh weekly publica- 



James Montgomery. 143 

tion, entitled The Bee, where, in November, 1791, 
appeared a tale by him, called The Chimera, of little 
merit. He next wrote a novel, in imitation of Field- 
ing, which he offered to Mr. Lane, the publisher. 
Lane read the work, and offered Montgomery twenty 
pounds for it, provided he would re-write it : c for,' 
said Lane, c you swear so shockingly, that I dare not 
publish the work as it is.' c This,' said Montgomery, 
long after, c was like a dagger to my heart, for I never 
swore an oath in my life, nor did I till that moment 
perceive the impropriety of making fictitious characters 
swear in print, as they do in Fielding and Smollett.' 
The novel was again offered to Lane long afterwards, 
and refused ; and in after life its author often expressed 
his thankfulness that things were so ordered. 

But in the meantime the disappointment was a bitter 
one, and Montgomery resolved to return to Yorkshire. 
He accordingly entered once more upon his shopman 
life at Wath. Meanwhile, in 1790, his mother died 
at Tobago, and was followed in a few months by his 
father. They had been conducting the Moravian 
Mission there for seven years. Their simplicity and 
piety appear to have been beyond all praise, and there 
is something very touching in the way in which the 
good missionary wrote to the Brethren of Fulneck, 
recording the death of his wife, whom he was so soon 
to follow. On November 10th, 1790, he wrote : — 

With a heart deeply affected, I must inform you that it has 
pleased the Lord to take my dear wife home to eternal rest, on 
the 23rd of October. Her illness was a fever, which lasted seven 
days. In the beginning no danger was apprehended ; but on the 



j 44 James Montgomery. 



fifth day the physician expressed some fears. I asked her 
whether she was going to leave me alone in this island ? She 
replied, ' Indeed I should wish to remain longer with you, 
knowing how much you want my assistance ; but the Lord's will 
be done.' 

He himself died on the 27th June following. A 
brother missionary wrote of him : — 

He fell happily asleep, as a ransomed sinner, rejoicing in God 
his Saviour, upon whose atonement he rested all his hopes, and 
now seeth him face to face in whom he believed, and of whose 
cross and death he bore many testimonies before whites and 
blacks. 

A less feeling heart than the poet's would have 
cherished the remembrance of parents so early parted 
and so sadly lost, and we are not surprised to learn 
that, till the end of his long life, Montgomery was 
accustomed very frequently to speak of them in terms 
of warm affection. 

My father, mother — parents now no more ! 

Beneath the lion -star they sleep, 

Beyond the Western deep : 

And when the sun's noon-glory crests the waves, 

He shines without a shadow on their graves ! * 

At the age of twenty-one, Montgomery, being still 
Mr. Hunt's shopman, took up by accident one day the 
Sheffield Register^ a newspaper published by a Mr. 
Gales, and there read an advertisement for a clerk in 
a counting-house in Sheffield. That advertisement 
formed the turning-point in the poet's history. He 

* Poetical Works, vol. ii. p. 166. 



James Montgomery. 145 

found it was Mr. Gales himself who stood in need of 
a clerk ; and in a few days he was domesticated with 
him in that house in a busy thoroughfare called ' The 
Hartshead,' which was to be his home for five-and- 
forty years. Mr. Joseph Gales of Sheffield was 
printer, bookseller, and auctioneer ; also editor and 
publisher of the newspaper just mentioned. Mont- 
gomery said publicly in 1845 triat there was not perhaps 
in the world a more lonely being than himself when, 
on a dark Sunday evening, he crossed the Ladies' 
Bridge, and walked up the market-place towards his 
future home. At that time Sheffield had only one- 
fourth of the population which Montgomery lived to 
see it contain. 

It was the future poet's business to make himself 
generally useful in his new situation. He attended 
Mr. Gales to act as clerk at the sales where he 
presided as auctioneer, and attended in the book- 
selling shop. Here he became acquainted with 
the Pleasures of Memory, the proof sheets of which 
were given him by a young man, a compositor in the 
printing-office, who had assisted while in London in 
c setting up ' the first edition of Mr. Rogers's pleasing 
work. Politics ran high in Sheffield, as elsewhere, 
about the year 1792. Mr. Gales was a vehement 
partisan ; and Montgomery, who regarded his master 
as c a generous, upright, and noble-minded ' man, very 
naturally came to feel c every pulse in his heart beating 
in favour of the popular doctrines.' On the 8th of 
April, 1793, Mr. Gales occupied the chair at a reform 
meeting held on the Castle-hill, which sent up a 

L 



146 James Montgomery. 

petition to the House of Commons expressed in terms 
so disrespectful that the House refused to receive it. 
Montgomery gradually began to write some political 
papers in the Register, concerning which he afterwards 
said, with tears, that when he wrote them ' he had 
been one of the greatest fools that ever obtruded 
himself on the public notice.' A royal proclamation 
having appointed the 28th February, 1794, to be 
observed as a general fast, the c Friends of Peace and 
Reform ' at Sheffield chose to honour the day after 
their own fashion, by holding a large public meeting, 
at which, after a prayer delivered by ' Billy Broomhead,' 
and a c serious lecture ' by ' Neddy Oakes,' a hymn, 
written for the occasion by Montgomery, c was sung in 
full chorus ' by the assembly, consisting of several 
thousand persons. A series of violent party dis- 
turbances followed ; and on one occasion, it being 
understood that the authorities contemplated some 
interference with Mr. Gales, a band of c a hundred 
stout democrats ' guarded his house for a day, singing 
c God save great Thomas Paine ' to the national air. 
But government suspicion — not without some reason — 
fell upon Mr. Gales, and a warrant was issued for his 
arrest. He fled to America, whence he did not return, 
and the Sheffield Register went down. 

By this time Montgomery had been two years in the 
office ; he had acquired the confidence of the Gales 
family ; he had latterly been writing a good deal in the 
newspaper; and now, in conjunction with a certain 
Naylor, he announced a new weekly paper, the 
Sheffield Iris. Thus rapidly had he passed from more 



James Montgomery. 147 

than cloister quiet to the bustle of a position the very last 
that might have been anticipated for one of his shrinking 
nature — that of editor and publisher of a Radical 
newspaper in stormy times. On July 4th, 1794, the 
first number of the Iris was published, on c peace and 
reform ' principles. How little suited was his sensitive 
spirit for party strife and business cares we learn from 
his own declaration made at the period — c I hate 
politics, and would as soon meet a bear as a ledger.' 
He knew that the eye of the government was upon 
him, which is not to be wondered at, if it was true, as 
his biographers tell us, that ' his paper was the organ, 
and his office the rendezvous, of the disaffected party.' 
A month after Montgomery had started on his own 
account occasion was found for coming down upon him. 
One day a ballad -singer came to his shop, and asked 
if he might have six quires of a certain ballad printed. 
Montgomery glanced at the ballad, which appeared 
innocent, and agreed to give the poor man what he 
wanted for eighteenpence. Two months afterwards 
Montgomery was taken into custody on the charge of 
having printed and published a seditious libel respecting 
the .war then waging between his Majesty and the 
French government. The ballad he had printed, 
which was entitled A Patriotic Song, by a Clergyman of 
Belfast, contained the following verse : — 

Europe's fate on the contest's decision depends ; 

Most important its issues will be ; 
For should France be subdued, Europe's liberty ends ; 

If she triumphs, the world will be free. 

Montgomery was held to bail, and was tried at 



148 James Montgomery. 

Doncaster in January, 1795. Everything about the 
proceeding was made as oppressive as possible. The 
enlightened jury found that ' James Montgomery, 
printer, being a wicked, malicious, seditious, and evil- 
disposed person, and seditiously contriving, devising, 
and intending to stir up and excite discontent and 
sedition among his Majesty's subjects, and to alienate 
and withdraw the affection, fidelity, and allegiance of 
his said Majesty's subjects,' &c. &c. &c, ' did publish 
the said libel.' Montgomery was sentenced to suffer 
three months' imprisonment in York Castle, and to pay 
a fine of twenty pounds. Poor Montgomery was at 
this time just three-and-twenty. At this date we need 
not hesitate to call the entire proceeding a scandalously 
oppressive one. Half a century afterwards the poet 
came into possession of the papers, including the brief 
for the prosecution. In that document it is stated that 
' this prosecution is carried on chiefly with the view of 
putting a stop to the meetings of the associated clubs in 
Sheffield.' Thus were things done in the grand old 
days when Eldon was Attorney-General. 

In literary occupation the time of imprisonment soon 
passed away ; and at its close Montgomery resumed 
his work at the Iris office. Soon after he became sole 
proprietor of the journal. But further ills awaited him. 
On occasion of one of those disturbances which were 
too common at Sheffield at that period, the military fired 
upon the people. The circumstances were described 
in the Iris in terms which the commanding officer 
regarded as levelled at himself. A second time did the 
luckless editor experience justice's justice, being sen- 



James Montgomery. 149 

tenced, after a tedious prosecution, to six months' 
imprisonment in York Castle, to pay a fine of thirty 
pounds, and to give security for good behaviour for two 
years. Montgomery had been racked with anxiety 
while the matter was in suspense, but his spirits 
became more cheerful when he found himself in his 
old quarters. By his gentleness he won the regard of 
all the officials of the prison ; and he beguiled the 
tedium of confinement by writing a small volume of 
poetry, which was published in the following year 
(1797) under the title of Prison Amusements. It is 
pleasant to record that the poet lived down the enmity 
of prosecutors and justices : some of those who had 
been most eager for his punishment upon both these 
occasions lived to know him better, and to become his 
fast friends. 

Montgomery's work at the Iris office now went on 
quietly in the course in which it was to run for many 
succeeding years. He thus describes his workshop : — 

From the room in which I sit to write, and in which some of 
my happiest pieces have been produced, all the prospect I have 
is a confined yard, where there are some miserable old walls and 
the backs of houses, which present to the eye neither beauty, 
variety, nor anything else calculated to inspire a single thought, 
except concerning the rough surface of the bricks, the corners of 
which have either been chipped off by violence or fretted away 
by the weather. As a general rule, whatever of poetry is to 
be derived from scenery must be secured before we sit down to 
compose. 

From this sanctum Montgomery was always ready to 
emerge when a customer entered the shop ; and an 
occasional relaxation was found in long rides for the 



150 James Montgomery. 

purpose of getting payment of accounts due to him. 
On one such occasion he mistook a private house for 
an inn, had his horse taken care of, and sat down to 
dinner with the family without invitation. The 
awkwardness of the bashful poet when he discovered 
his mistake may be imagined. 

The romance of Montgomery's life was early over. 
A girl named Hannah — the surname is unknown to 
us — had attracted his admiration while he lived at 
Wath. In the Iris of August 29, 1801, appeared, 
without any signature, a poem with the title, Sacred to 
the Memory of Her who is Dead to Me. Some time 
after it was reprinted in a volume of Montgomery's 
poems, under its present well-known title of Hannah. 
His friends in after years often endeavoured to learn 
from him how far the story is to be regarded as a true 
one, but he always shrunk from the subject. It ap- 
pears beyond question that Hannah was, in Mont- 
gomery's history and memory, a humbler version of 
poor Goldsmith's fessamy Bride. 

In 1805 Montgomery wrote The Grave and The 
Common Lot^ his first poems indicative of great ability. 
The latter was destined to an almost unequalled popu- 
larity. x It was written upon his thirty-fourth birthday. 
His first long poem, The Wanderer of Switzerland^ 
was published in 1806. So little importance did he 
attach to it that it was three years passing through his 
own press, being proceeded with only when the types 
were not more profitably engaged. It has always 
appeared to us, we confess, a very washy production ; 
still it passed rapidly through two editions of five 



James Montgomery. 151 

hundred copies each. Soon after its publication the 
poet visited Fulneck for the first time since he quitted 
it for the counter ; and on this occasion he wrote his 
pleasing little poem, Departed Days. The Wanderer 
of Switzerland was favourably noticed in the Eclectic 
Review ; and at the request of Mr. Parken, the editor, 
Montgomery became a regular contributor to that 
periodical. For several years almost all its articles 
were written by Parken, Montgomery, and John 
Foster. One of the poet's first papers was a slashing 
criticism of Moore's early poems. Writing to Parken, 
he says : — 

I can assure you I have done my best — that is, my worst — 
to condemn this profligate volume according to the strictest 
justice. I endeavoured to admit the full merit of the author's 
talents, while I did not spare one hair of his demerits as a liber- 
tine in principle, and a deliberate seducer in practice. 

Montgomery's critical papers exhibit him rather as a 
good pious man of a fine honest spirit than as a powerful 
writer. About this time, from conscientious scruples, 
he left off" theatre-going, and also ceased attending a 
club which he had frequented almost every evening 
for several years, at too great an c expense of time, 
conscience, and self-respect.' He became more de- 
cidedly pious than heretofore, and began to attend a 
Methodist chapel regularly. He was by no means of 
a sectarian spirit, and, in his latter days especially, testi- 
fied much affection for the church. A third edition 
of The Wanderer of Switzerland having been published 
by Messrs. Longman, the poem attracted the notice of 



152 James Montgomery. 

Jeffrey, and was severely commented upon in the 
Edinburgh Review. We give an extract : — 

We took compassion upon Mr. Montgomery on his first ap- 
pearance, conceiving him to be some slender youth of seventeen, 
intoxicated with weak tea and the praises of sentimental ensigns, 
and tempted, in that situation, to commit a feeble outrage on 
the public, of which the recollection would be sufficient punish- 
ment. A third edition, however, is too alarming to be passed 
over in silence ; and though we are perfectly persuaded that in 
three years nobody will know the name of the Wanderer of 
Switzerland, or any of the other poems in this collection, still 
we feel ourselves called on to interfere to prevent the mischief 
that may arise from the intermediate prevalence of so distressing 
an epidemic. Mr. Montgomery is one of the most musical and 
melancholy fine gentlemen we have descried on the lower slopes 
of Parnassus. He is very weakly, very finical, and very 
affected. 

In a letter to his friend Mr. Aston, Montgomery 
says that c he had been wounded perhaps as deeply by 
these envious and pitiful slanders as the critic intended.' 
And to Parken he writes — c The Edinburgh Review 
made me miserable beyond anything that the malice 
and tyranny of man had been able to inflict on my 
sensibility or my pride.' A long season of depression 
followed, though the sensitive poet was cheered by 
the praises of Coleridge, Wordsworth, and Scott. 
Mr. Bowyer, of Pall Mall, proposed to commemorate 
the abolition of the slave-trade in 1807 by the publica- 
tion of a series of engravings, representing the suffer- 
ings of the slaves, accompanied by an illustrative poem. 
This he asked Montgomery to contribute ; and in the 
spring of 1809 the West Indies appeared in a five- 
guinea quarto volume, accompanied by one or two 



James Montgomery. 153 

pieces by other authors. This poem, afterwards pub- 
lished in a cheaper form, attained a large circulation : 
a friendly critic told its author that its earnestness and 
vehemence ' give to the versification something of the 
character of loud speaking.' Cowper was at this time 
Montgomery's model. Roscoe wrote of the West Indies 
that c he was delighted with its simplicity and pathos, no 
less than with its poetical ornament and spirit.' 

In 18 13 appeared The World before the Flood, the 
most popular of Montgomery's long poems. One 
Sunday morning, he tells us, before starting to his 
usual place of worship, he happened to be meditating 
on the history of Enoch. At the same time a passage 
in the Eleventh Book of Paradise Lost occurred to 
him, in which Milton describes Enoch's translation. 
Instantly an idea flashed upon him ; and in a few 
months the plan thus suddenly conceived was elaborated 
into a poem of four cantos. By the advice of Roscoe 
and Southey, the poem was re-written, and after great 
labour was brought to its present form in ten short 
cantos. It at once became known. It was favourably 
noticed in many periodicals ; and in two years four 
thousand copies were sold in England alone. 

Montgomery now began to take that interest in 
religious schemes which he manifested through the 
remainder of his life. He thus provoked the enmity 
of some of his former political friends, who said that 
he ' had ceased to be an advocate of the poor, further 
than as respects their souls, and in that we have not a 
more bigoted advocate in the country, because it is 
much cheaper to feed them than the other.' He was 



154 James Montgomery. 

fond of attending the c May meetings ;' and on a visit 
to London in May, 1812, he heard Campbell and 
Coleridge lecture at the Royal Institution. In 1813 
he partook of the Sacrament for the first time, having 
hitherto had conscientious scruples as to his fitness. 
And in this year Mr. Everett first saw him ; and 
* gazed upon him with inexpressible delight, while pur- 
chasing a volume of his poems.' 

In November, 18 14, at the age of forty-three, the 
poet applied for re-admission to the communion of the 
Moravian Church at Fulneck, from which he regarded 
himself as an apostate. The reply he received is 
rather startling. The Rev. C. F. Ramftler writes, ' I 
will not delay informing you that in our Elders' Con- 
ference to-day our Saviour approved of your being now 
re-admitted a member of the Brethren's Church.' 

But as Fulneck was forty miles off, Montgomery's 
connection with the church there was merely nominal, 
and he continued to attend the Methodist chapel at 
Sheffield. In pp. 78-80 of vol. iii. we have an 
account of the solitary occasion on which the poet 
preached. He appears to have much delighted his 
audience ; and we presume that a layman officiating in 
this manner is not deemed a breach of ecclesiastical 
order among the Methodists. Becoming more strict 
in his notions of duty, he now refused not only to sell 
tickets (as he had been accustomed to do) in the State 
Lottery, but to insert advertisements relating to it. 

In 18 19 was published the missionary poem of 
Greenland^ in which Montgomery celebrated the la- 
bours of the Moravians in that bleak country. On 



James Montgomery. 155 

the death of George III. he wrote a copy of verses, 
containing a graceful tribute to the memory of that 
weak but good old man. And the Songs of Zion, a 
collection of religious poetry, appeared soon after. In 
this collection was first published that beautiful little 
poem entitled Prayer, so popular among all classes of 
professing Christians. Two or three years later Mont- 
gomery' edited the Climbing Boy's Album, the purpose 
of which was to call attention to the sufferings of the 
children engaged in chimney-sweeping. Montgomery's 
best contribution to this work is its Introduction, be- 
ginning with the lines — 

I know they scorn the climbing boy, 
The gay, the selfish, and the proud : 

and ending with the vigorous verse, 

Yes, let the scorn that tracks his course 
Turn on me, like a trodden snake ; - 

And hiss, and sting me with remorse, 
If I the fatherless forsake. 

All this while the circulation of the Iris was di- 
minishing, and the poet was longing to get out of 
harness. The paper was very ill printed, the same fount 
of long primer having been used for twenty years. An 
opposition journal, professing more liberal politics, was 
started in 18 19. Montgomery's shrinking nature was 
not suited for a position better fitted for men of the 
mark of Messrs. Slurk and Pott. After negotiating 
with several parties, Montgomery finally sold the Iris to 
a Mr. Blackwell, a retired Methodist preacher ; and on 
September 27th, 1825, the last number under the poet's 



156 Ja?nes Montgomery. 

regime was published, with a farewell address from the 
editor. A public dinner was given him on his birth- 
day, the 4th November, 1825. It was attended by a 
hundred and sixteen gentlemen, of every shade of poli- 
tics, under the presidency of Lord Milton — all eager to 
testify their esteem for one who needed only to be known 
to be respected and beloved. An elegant inkstand of 
Sheffield manufacture was presented to him ; and the 
people of Sheffield offered him a tribute yet more grace- 
ful by subscribing funds to establish in the island of 
Tobago, where his parents had died, a mission-station 
bearing the name of Montgomery , which at the present 
day contains about 1,400 adults and as many children. 
' With God's blessing upon the preaching of his gospel 
by his servants there,' said the pious poet, in 1840, c may 
it perpetuate, to the end of time, the memory of those 
sainted relatives who left that name to me.' 

Now set free from business cares, Montgomery gave 
his time to literature and works of benevolence. He 
went about making speeches at religious meetings in the 
neighbouring towns, sometimes going as far as Liver- 
pool and Chester. His friends kept him busy. On 
one occasion we find him speaking at six Bible meetings 
between Friday and Monday. He was a leading man 
in all town matters, and took a chief part, in the interest 
of the church, at a stormy and scandalous church-rate 
meeting held in the parish church at Sheffield. He was 
invited to meet Moore at Stoke Hall ; but a needless 
scruple led him to decline, thinking that he ought not 
to c write with severity against the immoral doctrines of 
the Anacreontic poet, and afterwards meet him at the 



James Montgomery. i ^y 

social board as if nothing of the sort had happened.' 
During this period Montgomery wrote The Pelican 
Island, which was published in August, 1827. The 
idea of this poem had been floating in his mind for nearly 
ten years. He prided himself upon the unintelligibility 
of its title : ' I defy all the heads into which the thought 
of poetry ever came to guess the plan or anticipate the 
issue, even while they are reading, before it is all 
developed ; and yet nothing can be more simple, gradual, 
and natural.' 

In February, 1828, appeared a widely circulated no- 
tice of the publication of ' Montgomery's new poem, 
The Omnipresence of the Deity. 9 All readers of Macau- 
lay's Essays are well aware that this work was written 
by Mr. Robert Montgomery, afterwards author of Satan , 
Luther, and other trashy writings. The Sheffield poet 
was much annoyed at a mode of advertising calculated 
to lead to the supposition that this ' new poem ' was 
written by himself, and the discreditable subterfuge led 
to the Omnipresence being bought, if not read, by many 
who would assuredly not have become possessed of any- 
thing avowedly by Mr. Robert Montgomery. A London 
evening paper reviewed the poem as James Mont- 
gomery's, and several booksellers ordered copies of the 
book under the same impression. In 1834, in the 
Quarterly Review, there was a flattering notice of 
The Common Lot, to which the following note was 
appended : — 

The Common Lot, by the poet Montgomery. We mean, of 
course, the individual properly designated Montgomery, and 
properly also designated the poet ; not the Mr. Gomery who 



158 James Montgomery. 

assumed the affix of ' Mont,' and through the aid of certain 
newspapers has coupled his name with other additions not less 
factitious. 

Upon this Mr. Robert Montgomery wrote to James 
Montgomery a letter, calling this passage from the 
Quarterly ' infamously false and disgustingly malignant,' 
and requiring the poet to ' address a line to Mr. Lock- 
hart, and insist on my not being slandered in order to 
gild your name.' To this extremely absurd request the 
poet sent a long reply, declining to accede to it, advising 
patience and forbearance, and concluding with the very 
sensible remark that all confusion would have been 
avoided had the publishers of ' Montgomery's new 
poem,' 'Montgomery's Satan,' &c, employed 'the 
simple prefix of Robert to a name already known with 
another antecedent.' 

In May, 1830, Montgomery read a course of lectures 
on The History of English Literature at the Royal Insti- 
tution, which made no striking impression. And in the 
same year he published a large work, a History of Mis- 
sionary Enterprise in the South Seas. Like Thomas 
Moore, he was alarmed at the passing of the Reform 
Bill : and indeed his political views had now (his 
biographers inform us) become what might be called 
moderately Conservative. A pension of ^150 a year, 
given him by Sir Robert Peel in 1835, to the extreme 
indignation of the Radicals of Sheffield, may not have 
been without its effect. On a subsequent visit to 
London he ' considered it becoming to pay his respects 
personally to Sir Robert,' who received him with great 
kindness, and invited him to dinner. On this occasion 



James Montgomery, 159 

he met several men of note, among them his early friend 
Chantrey ; and he was delighted by the c old English 
cordiality' of the Bishop of London, who c shook him 
heartily by the hand in a manly manner, not finically 
offering him two fingers, after the manner of some 
persons. 5 Rogers invited him to dinner, but the invita- 
tion was with characteristic principle declined, as it was 
for a Sunday. He met Horace Twiss, who imme- 
diately asked him, c Are you, the Montgomery who wrote 
The Common Lot ? It is one of the finest compositions 
in the language.' c It has, indeed,' replied the poet, 
' had the uncommon lot of being highly praised.' 

In 1835 he declined the office of Professor of Rhe- 
toric in the University of Edinburgh. Mrs. Holland 
writes as follows of his appearance at this time : — 

Nature has rendered him the very youngest man of his years 
ever beheld. Had he not been known to the world as a poet for 
thirty years, he might at this very time pass for thirty ; such is 
the slightness of his figure, the elasticity of his step, the smooth- 
ness of his fair brow, the mobility and playfulness of his features 
when in conversation. 

Montgomery had lived for more than forty years in 
the house in the Hartshead which had received him on 
his first coming to Sheffield. Three daughters of his 
old employer, Mr. Gales, lived with him, and kept a 
bookseller's shop. From this they retired in 1836, on 
the death of one of the sisters ; and Montgomery, along 
with the two survivors, removed in that year to the 
c Mount,' a handsome pile of building, c comprising 
eight genteel dwellings, and situate on an eminence 
about a mile and a half west from the centre of the 



] Go James Montgomery. 

town.' In March he went to Newcastle to deliver six 
lectures On the British Poets, for doing which he was 
paid j£45, and from this time forward he added some- 
thing to his income by similar engagements. In this 
year also appeared the first uniform edition of his Poems, 
in three volumes. It had a large sale. A copy of the 
book was sent to Wordsworth, who replied promptly 
and gracefully. In 1 837 one of the Misses Gales died, 
leaving Sarah the sole survivor. The deceased had 
been for a loner time in a fretful and ailing state j and 
Montgomery wrote feelingly, that c neither of patience 
nor good nature had he much to spare, being in continual 
need of both for home consumption.' 

The c Penny Postage ' was not regarded as a boon by 
Montgomery, as it multiplied the number of his cor- 
respondents in an annoying degree. He was pestered 
by multitudes of young ladies to write in their albums, 
— a request he never failed to comply with. One cool 
lady wrote to him, saying that she had heard a great deal 
of his poetry, and would like to read it ; and that as she 
could not afford to buy a set, she wished him to give 
her one. The good-natured poet at once complied with 
the extortionate demand. 

In 1 84 1, being then seventy years old, he revisited 
Scotland for the first time since he had left it, sixty-five 
years before. Along with Mr. Latrobe, he held a 
number of meetings in various towns, at which he 
raised above ^600 for the Moravian missions. The 
poet was received everywhere with every token of 
respect and admiration. At Glasgow, Paisley, Kil- 
marnock, and Ayr, multitudes assembled to listen to 



James Montgomery. 16 I 

his addresses ; and at Irvine, his native place, the 
enthusiasm of the people was irrepressible. He wrote 
to Sarah Gales : — 

I was met at the station by the provost and magistrates, and 
being conducted to their hall, was made a burgess of that ancient 
and royal burgh ; and my freedom-scroll was presented with 
many very fine and cordial congratulations. I cannot say more 
than that the heart of all Irvine seemed to be moved on the 
occasion, and every soul in it, old and young, rich and poor, to 
hail me to my birthplace. My heart was almost beyond feel- 
ing by the overpowering kindness that oppressed it, and the out- 
flowing gratitude that could scarcely find vent in words or tears. 

Montgomery visited his father's chapel, and the 
cottage where he was born. He saw an aged woman, 
who told him she had many a time carried him on her 
back. ' I had no idea,' he said, at Edinburgh, ' till I 
came to Irvine how great a man I was.' From Irvine 
the deputation proceeded to Stirling, Perth, and Edin- 
burgh, large missionary meetings being held in each of 
these towns. His reception was such that it reminded 
him of the saying of Dr. Johnson on Lord Mansfield, 
that much may be made of a Scotchman if he is 
caught young. ' My case,' he said, ' was the reverse 
of this : I thought much was sometimes made of a 
Scotchman when he was grown old, for I never was 
so much made of till I came to Scotland.' 

Mr. Robert Montgomery was now a popular 
preacher in Glasgow, but he did not think fit to pay a 
visit to his illustrious namesake while in that city. 
The poet went to hear him preach, but did not admire 
his oratory. Miss Gales asked, c Do not the ladies of 

M 



\6z James Mo?itgo7nery . 

Glasgow admire his person and address ? ' Mont- 
gomery replied, ' Yes, I heard some of them praise the 
delicacy of his hands ; but it seems none of his fair 
admirers can get fast hold of them.' 

After Montgomery's return from Scotland, the 
evening of his life glided away with little incident. 
In 1842 he went with Mr. Latrobe on a missionary 
tour to Ireland, and visited his father's former abode at 
Grace Hill. The death of his brother Ignatius, a 
worthy Moravian minister, deeply affected him ; and 
in his last years he often expressed his regret that he 
himself had not entered the ministry of the Brother- 
hood, as his parents had desired. On the death of 
Southey his friends thought it probable he might be 
offered the laureateship ; but the office was conferred on 
Wordsworth. After the beginning of 1843 tne P oet 
began to sink fast in health and spirits, often describing 
himself as c ailing, feeble, and spiritless.' He regarded 
it as a milestone marking his downward course when, 
in 1845, ne became unable to put on his greatcoat 
without assistance ; and though he continued to appear 
occasionally at religious meetings, his voice had become 
so weak and his mind so much enfeebled that his 
appearance there was painful to his friends. c His 
mind,' he said in 1846, 'was worn down to a grindle- 
coke,' — the Sheffield term for a worn-out grindstone. 
In October of that year he fell down a long flight of 
stairs, and c was dreadfully bruised, and sadly shaken 
and unnerved.' Still he was able in the following year 
to pay a visit to Fulneck ; and in May, 1848, he 
presided at the anniversary meeting of the Wesleyan 



James Montgomery. 163 

Missionary Society at Sheffield. In that year the 
Sheffield Iris became extinct. The poet continued to 
read with interest the periodicals and new books of the 
day : he wrote a hymn now and then, but even that 
slight exertion affected his health. In 1849 the new 
edition of his Poems^ in four volumes, was published 
by Messrs. Longman, and in 1850 the edition in one 
volume. Montgomery was startled, in 185 1, by 
reading in an American newspaper a notice of his 
death, with a sketch of his life and character. On the 
evening of July 19th, 1852, he delivered a lecture at 
the Music Hall, On Some Passages of English Poetry 
Little Known ; but his feeble state excited the sym- 
pathy of his audience, c all of whom were now con- 
scious that it was the last time they should ever so 
meet and hear him.' In October of that year he 
c cried many a time ' over Uncle Tom's Cabin ; and so 
late as February, 1854, he listened with much interest 
to passages from Landor's Last Fruit off an Old Tree. 
He had hoped to spend Easter of that year at Fulneck, 
but failing strength disappointed him. On the after- 
noon of Saturday, the 29th of April, he called on Mr. 
Holland, and complained of some oppression at the 
chest, but walked home as usual. He was c fidgety ' 
during the evening, and at family-worship handed the 
Bible to Sarah Gales, and asked her to read : he then 
knelt down, and prayed with peculiar fervour. He 
retired to rest at his accustomed hour, but the next 
morning a servant found hirn lying unconscious on the 
floor, where he must have been for several hours. 
Medical aid was procured, and he recovered so far as 



\6\ James Montgomery. 

to take a little dinner. At half-past three in the 
afternoon, while Miss Gales was sitting by his bedside, 
watching him apparently asleep, a slight change passed 
over his features. Montgomery was gone. 

He was buried on the nth of May 5 in the cemetery 
at Sheffield, amid such demonstrations of respect as 
were never paid to any individual in Sheffield before. 
The shops were generally closed, and the manufactories 
deserted. All the official bodies of Sheffield were 
represented in the procession. The vicar of Sheffield 
and twenty-four of the clergy formed part of it. The 
burial service of the Church of England was read by 
the vicar, and at its conclusion a hymn, written long 
before by the poet himself, was sung by the parish 
choir and the children of the boys' and girls' charity 
schools. The coffin bore the inscription—' James 
Montgomery : died April the 30th, 1854, in the 83rd 
year of his age.' 

We have not space to offer anything like a satis- 
factory estimate of this good man's poetical genius. 
That he had from an early age the poetic temperament 
strongly developed cannot be questioned ; nor need we 
hesitate to say that no religious poet has ever surpassed 
him in the grace and melody of his diction, the purity, 
pathos, and fervour of his thought. A great charm in 
Montgomery's sacred poetry results from its evident 
sincerity : the glittering conceits with which Moore 
has surrounded pious themes do not ring sound when 
we compare them with the simple earnestness which 
breathes from every line of the happiest effusions of the 
poet of Sheffield. Not force and passion, but chaste 



James Montgomery. 165 

beauty and gentle pathos, are the characteristics of what 
Montgomery wrote ; and the piety of the man had so 
permeated and leavened his entire being that without a 
thought or effort it coloured everything that proceeded 
from his pen. No short poems in the language have 
found a wider circulation or a more universal accept- 
ance than Prayer and The Common Lot ; and we might 
easily gather from The Pelican Island and The World 
before the Flood specimens of a more daring flight than 
are familiar to such as know Montgomery mainly as a 
hymnologist. We find nowhere in his four volumes 
that insight, passion, and reach of reflection, which 
distinguish the highest class of the poetry of to-day. 
The beautiful Lines to a Mole-hill in a Church-yard, 
which Montgomery amplified and spoiled in his latest 
edition, have always appeared to us to comprise, within 
a short space, the most favourable characteristics of 
his poetry : there is, indeed, that undue dilution of 
thought, which marks the composition of one who never 
learned to compress : but there are likewise a vein of 
gentle original reflection, a pathos which permeates the 
whole, a sympathy with all that is or was human, — all 
sobered somewhat by the poet's pervading sadness, and 
all expressed in words so choice, so harmonious, so 
naturally arranged, as prove how lightly the material 
trammels of verse sat upon his gentle and graceful 
spirit. No wonder if all who knew him loved the 
simple, pious, amiable, weak old man ; no wonder if 
Sheffield was and is proud to claim him as her citizen ; 
no wonder if the little Scotch town by the shore of the 
Atlantic, that gave him birth, and then saw him no 



1 66 James Montgomery. 

more till he came back a man of threescore years and 
ten, frail, timid, and famous, makes it her proudest 
boast that there was born James Montgomery ; and 
preserves in her archives, with maternal solicitude, 
the manuscript of The World before the Flood. 



167 



FRIENDS IN COUNCIL.* 

THERE is a peculiar pleasure in paying a visit to 
a friend whom you never saw in his own house 
before. Let it not be believed that in this world there 
is much difficulty in finding a new sensation. The 
genial, unaffected, hard-wrought man, who does not 
think it fine to appear to care nothing for anything, 
will find a new sensation in many quiet places, and in 
many simple ways. There is something fresh and 
pleasant in arriving at an entirely new railway station, 
in getting out upon a platform on which you never 
before stood ; in finding your friend standing there 
looking quite at home in a place quite strange to you ; 
in taking in at a glance the expression of the porter 
who takes your luggage and the clerk who receives 
your ticket, and reading there something of their cha- 
racter and their life ; in going outside, and seeing for 
the first time your friend's carriage, whether the stately 
drag or the humbler dog-cart, and beholding horses 

* Friends in Council : a Series of Readings and Discourses thereon. A 
New Series. Two Volumes. London: 1859. 



1 68 Friends In Council. 

you never saw before, caparisoned in harness hereto- 
fore unseen ; in taking your seat upon cushions hitherto 
unpressed by you, in seeing your friend take the reins, 
and then in rolling away over a new road, under new 
trees, over new bridges, beside new hedges, looking 
upon new landscapes stretching far away, and breaking 
in upon that latent idea common to all people who 
have seen very little, that they have seen almost all 
the world. Then there is something fresh and pleasant 
in driving for the first time up the avenue, in catching 
the first view of the dwelling which is to your friend 
the centre of all the world, in walking up for the first 
time to your chamber (you ought always to arrive at a 
country house for a visit about three quarters of an 
hour before dinner), and then in coming down and 
finding yourself in the heart of his belongings ; seeing 
his wife and children, never seen before; finding out 
his favourite books, and coming to know something of 
his friends, horses, dogs, pigs, and general way of life ; 
and then after ten days, in going away, feeling that you 
have occupied a new place and seen a new phase of 
life, henceforward to be a possession for ever. 

But it is pleasanter by a great deal to go and pay a 
visit to a friend visited several times (not too frequently) 
before ; to arrive at the old railway station, quiet and 
country-like, with trees growing out of the very plat- 
form on which you step ; to see your friend's old face 
not seen for two years ; to go out and discern the old 
drag standing just where you remember it, and to 
smooth down the horses' noses as an old acquaintance ; 
to discover a look of recognition on the man-servant's 



Friends in Council. 169 

impassive face, which at your greeting expands into a 
pleased smile ; to drive away along the old road, re- 
cognising cottages and trees ; to come in sight of the 
house again, your friend's conversation and the entire 
aspect of things bringing up many little remembrances 
of the past ; to look out of your chamber window 
before dinner and to recognise a large beech or oak 
which you had often remembered when you were far 
away, and the field beyond, and the hills in the dis- 
tance, and to know again even the pattern of the 
carpet and the bed curtains ; to go down to dinner, 
and meet the old greeting ; to recognise the taste of 
the claret; to find the children a little bigger, a little 
shy at first, but gradually acknowledging an old ac- 
quaintance ; and then, when your friend and you are 
left by yourselves, to draw round the fire (such visits 
are generally in September), and enjoy the warm, 
hearty look of the crimson curtains hanging in the self- 
same folds as twenty- four months since, and talk over 
many old things. 

We feel, in opening the new volumes of Friends in 
Council, as we should in going to pay a visit to an old 
friend living in the same pleasant home, and at the 
same pleasant autumnal season in which we visited 
him before. We know what to expect. We know 
that there may be little variations from what we have 
already found, little changes wrought by time ; but, 
barring great accident or disappointment, we know 
what kind of thing the visit will be. And we believe 
that to many who have read with delight the previous 
volumes of this work there can hardly be any pleasanter 



I/O Friends in Council. 

anticipation than that of more of the same wise, kindly, 
interesting material which they remember. A good 
many years have passed since the first volume of Friends 
in Council was published ; a good many years even 
since the second : for, besides various conversations 
which are not included in the present series, the essays 
and discourses now given to the public form the third 
published portion of the work. Continuations of suc- 
cessful works have proverbially proved failures ; the 
author was his own too successful rival ; and intelligent 
readers, trained to expect much, have generally de- 
clared that the new production was, if not inferior to 
its predecessor, at all events inferior to what its prede- 
cessor had taught them to look for. But there is no 
falling off here. The writing of essays and conversa- 
tions, set in a framework of scenery and incident, and 
delineating character admirably though only incidentally, 
is the field of literature in which the author stands 
without a rival. No one in modern days can discuss 
a grave subject in a style so attractive ; no one can 
convey so much wisdom with so much playfulness 
and kindliness ; no one can evince so much earnestness 
unalloyed by the least tinge of exaggeration. The 
order of thought which is contained in Friends in 
Council is quarried from its author's best vein. Here 
he has come upon what gold-diggers call a pocket : and 
he appears to work it with little effort. However 
difficult it might be for others to write an essay and 
discourse on it in the fashion of this book, we should 
judge that its author does so quite easily. It is no task 
for suns to shine. And it will bring back many plea- 



Friends in Council. 171 

sant remembrances to the minds of many readers to 
open these new volumes, and find themselves at once 
in the same kindly atmosphere as ever ; to find that 
the old spring is flowing yet. The new series of 
Friends in Council is precisely what the intelligent reader 
must have expected. A thoroughly good writer can 
never surprise us. A writer whom we have studied, 
mused over, sympathised with, can surprise us only by 
doing something eccentric, affected, unworthy of him- 
self. The more thoroughly we have sympathised with 
him ; the more closely we have marked not only the 
strong characteristics which are already present in what 
he writes, but those little matters which may be the 
germs of possible new characteristics ; the less likely 
is it that we shall be surprised by anything he does or 
says. It is so with the author of Friends in Council. 
We know precisely what to expect from him. We 
should feel aggrieved if he gave us anything else. Of 
course there will be much wisdom and depth of insight ; 
much strong practical sense : there will be playfulness, 
pensiveness, pathos 3 great fairness and justice ; much 
kindness of heart ; something of the romantic element ; 
and as for style, there will be language always free 
from the least trace of affectation ; always clear and 
comprehensible ; never slovenly j sometimes remark- 
able for a certain simple felicity ; sometimes rising into 
force and eloquence of a very high order : a style, in 
short, not to be parodied, not to be caricatured, not to 
be imitated except by writing as well. The author 
cannot sink below our expectations ; cannot rise above 
them. He has already written so much, and so many 



1 73 Friends in Council. 

thoughtful readers have so carefully studied what he 
has written, that we know the exact length of his 
tether, and he can say nothing for which we are not 
prepared. You know exactly what to expect in this 
new work. You could not, indeed, produce it ; you 
could not describe it, you could not say beforehand 
what it will be ; but when you come upon it, you will 
feel that it is just what you were sure it would be. 
You were sure, as you are sure what will be the 
flavour of the fruit on your pet apple-tree, which you 
have tasted a hundred times. The tree is cruite certain 
to produce that fruit which you remember and like so 
well ; it is its nature to do so. And the analogy holds 
further. For, as little variations in weather or in the 
treatment of the tree — a dry season, or some special 
application to the roots — may somewhat alter the fruit, 
though all within narrow limits ; so may change of 
circumstances a little affect an author's writings, but 
only within a certain range. The apple-tree may pro- 
duce a somewhat different apple ; but it will never 
produce an orange, neither will it yield a crab. 

When we have sufficiently enjoyed the external and 
material characteristics of the volumes, we shall find 
ourselves among our old friends. We should have 
good reason to complain had Dunsford, Ellesmere, or 
Milverton been absent ; and here they are again just as 
before. Possibly they are even less changed than they 
should have been after thirteen or fourteen years, con- 
sidering what their age was at our first introduction to 
them. Dunsford, the elderly country parson, once 
fellow and tutor of his college, still reports the conver- 



Friends in Council. 173 

sations of the friends ; Milverton and Ellesmere are, in 
their own way, as fond of one another as ever ; Duns- 
ford is still judicious, kind, good,- somewhat slow, as 
country parsons not unnaturally become ; Ellesmere is 
still sarcastic, keen, clever, with much real worldly 
wisdom and much affected cynicism overlying a kind and 
honest heart. As for Milverton, we should judge that 
in him the author of the work has unconsciously shown 
us himself; for assuredly the great characteristics of the 
author of Friends in Council must be that he is laborious, 
thoughtful, generous, well-read, much in earnest, eager 
for the welfare of his fellow-men, deeply interested in 
politics and in history, impatient of puritanical restraints, 
convinced of the substantial importance of amusement. 
Milverton, we gather, still lives at his country seat in 
Hampshire, and takes some interest in rustic concerns. 
Ellesmere continues to rise at the bar ; since we last 
met him has been Solicitor-General, and is now Sir 
"John, a Member of the House of Commons, and in 
the fair way to a Chief Justiceship. The clergyman's 
quiet life is going on as before. But in addition to our 
three old friends we find an elderly man, one Mr. Mid- 
hurst, whose days have been spent in diplomacy, who 
is of a melancholy disposition, and takes gloomy views 
of life, but who is much skilled in cookery, very fat, 
and very fond of a good dinner. Also Mildred and 
Blanche, Milverton's cousins, two sisters, have grown 
up into young women of very different character : and 
they take some share in the conversations, and, as we 
shall hereafter see, a still more important part in the 
action of the story. We feel that we are in the midst 



174 Friends in Council. 

of a real group of actual human beings : — just what 
third-rate historians fail to make us feel when telling us 
of men and women who have actually lived. The time 
and place are very varied; but through the greater por- 
tion of the book the party are travelling over the 
Continent. A further variation from the plan of the 
former volumes, besides the introduction of new cha- 
racters, is, that while all the essays in the preceding 
series were written by Milverton, we have now one by 
Ellesmere, one by Dunsford, and one by Mr. Midhurst, 
each being in theme and manner very characteristic of 
its author. But, as heretofore, the writer of the book 
holds to his principle of the impolicy of 'jading anything 
too far,' and thinks with Bacon, that ' it is good, in 
discourse and speech of conversation, to vary and inter- 
mingle speech of the present occasion with arguments, 
tales with reasons, asking of* questions with telling of 
opinions, and jest with earnest.' The writer likewise 
holds by that system which his own practice has done 
so much to recommend — of giving locality and time to 
all abstract thought, and thus securing in the case of 
the majority of readers an interest and a reality in no 
other way to be attained. Admirable as are the essays 
contained in the work, but for their setting in something 
of a story, and their viviflcation by being ascribed to 
various characters, and described as read and discussed 
in various scenes, they would interest a very much 
smaller class of readers than now they do. No doubt 
much of the skill of the dramatist is needed to secure 
this source of interest. It can be secured only where 
we feel that the characters are living men and women, 



Friends in Council. 175 

and the attempt to secure it has often proved a 
miserable failure. But it is here that the author of 
Friends in Council succeeds so well. Not only do 
we know precisely what Dunsford, Milverton, and 
Ellesmere are like ; we know exactly what they 
ought and what they ought not to say. The author 
ran a risk in reproducing those old friends. We 
had a right to expect in each of them a certain idiosyn- 
crasy ; and it is not easy to maintain an individuality 
which does not dwell in mere caricature and exaggera- 
tion, but in the truthful traits of actual life. We feel 
we have a vested interest in the characters of the three 
friends : not even their author has the right essentially 
to alter them ; we should feel it an injury if he did. 
But he has done what he intended. Here we have the 
selfsame, men. Not a word is said by one of them 
that ought to have been said by another. And here it 
may be remarked, that any one who is well read in the 
author's writings will not fail here and there to come 
upon what will appear familiar to him. Various thoughts, 
views, and even expressions occur which the author 
has borrowed from himself. It is easy to be seen that 
in all this there is no conscious repetition, but that veins 
of thought and feeling long entertained have cropped 
out to the surface again. 

We do not know whether or not the readers of 
Friends in Council will be startled at finding that these 
volumes show us the grave Milverton and the sarcastic 
Ellesmere in the capacity of lovers, and leave them in 
the near prospect of being married — Ellesmere to the 
bold and dashing Mildred ; Milverton to the quiet 



ij6 



Friends in Council. 



Blanche. The gradual tending of things to this con- 
clusion forms the main action of the book. The in- 
cidents are of the simplest character : there is a plan 
but no plot, except as regards these marriages. Wearied 
and jaded with work at home, the three friends of the 
former volumes resolve on going abroad for a while. 
Midhurst and the girls accompany them : and the story- 
is simply that at various places to which they came, 
one friend read an essay or uttered a discourse (for 
sometimes the essays are supposed to have been given 
extempore)^ and the others talked about it. But the 
gradual progress of matters towards the weddings (it 
may be supposed that the happy couples are this Sep- 
tember on their wedding tours) is traced with much 
skill and much knowledge of the fashion in which such 
things go ; and it supplies a peculiar interest to the work, 
which will probably tide many young ladies over essays 
on such grave subjects as Government and Despotism. 
Still, we confess that we had hardly regarded Ellesmere 
and Milverton as marrying men. We had set them 
down as too old, grave, and wise, for at least the pre- 
liminary stages. We have not forgotten that Dunsford 
told us* that in the summer of 1847 ne supposed no 
one but himself would speak of Milverton and Ellesmere 
as young men ; and now of course they are twelve 
years older, and yet about to be married to girls whom 
we should judge to be about two or three and twenty. 
And although it is not an unnatural thing that Ellesmere 
should have got over his affection for the German 

* Friends in Council, Introduction to Eook II. 



Friends in Council. ijj 

Gretchen, whose story is so exquisitely told in the 
Companions of my Solitude^ we find it harder to reconcile 
Milverton's marriage with our previous impression of 
him. Yet perhaps all this is truthful to life. It is not 
an unnatural thing that a man who for years has settled 
down into the belief that he has faded, and that for him 
the romantic interest has gone from life, should upon 
some fresh stimulus gather himself up from that idea, 
and think that life is not so far gone after all. Who 
has not on a beautiful September day sometimes chidden 
himself for having given in to the impression that the 
season was so far advanced, and clung to the belief 
that it is almost summer still ? 

In a preliminary Address to the Reader ', the author 
explains that the essay on War^ which occupies a con- 
siderable portion of the first volume, was written some 
time ago, and intends no allusion to recent events in 
Europe. The Address contains an earnest protest 
against the maintenance of large standing armies; it 
is eloquent and forcible, and it affords additional proof 
how much the author has thought upon the subject of 
war, and how deeply he feels upon it. Then comes 
the Introduction proper, written, of course, by Dunsford. 
It sets out with the praise of conversation, and then it 
sums up what the ' Friends ' have learned in their 
longer experience of life : — 

We ' Friends in Council ' are of course somewhat older men 
than when we first began to meet in friendly conclave ; and I 
have observed as men go on in life they are less and less inclined 
to be didactic. They have found out that nothing is, didacti- 
cally speaking, true. They long for exceptions, modifications, 

N 



178 Friends in Council. 

allowances. A boy is clear, sharp, decisive in his talk. He 
would have this. He would do that. He hates this; he loves 
that : and his loves or his hatreds admit of no exception. He is 
sure that the one thing is quite right, and the other quite wrong. 
He is not troubled with doubts. He knows. 

I see now why, as men go on in life, they delight in anecdotes. 
These tell so much, and argue, or pronounce directly, so little. 

The three friends were sauntering one day in 
Milverton's garden, all feeling much overwrought and 
very stupid. Ellesmere proposed that for a little re- 
creation they should go abroad. Milverton pleads his 
old horror of picture-galleries, and declares himself 
content with the unpainted pictures he has in his 
mind : — 

It is curious, but I have been painting two companion pic- 
tures ever since we have been walking about in the garden. One 
consists of some dilapidated garden architecture, with overgrown 
foliage of all kinds, not forest foliage, but that of rare trees such 
as the Sumach and Japan-cedar, which should have been neglected 
for thirty years. Here and there, instead of the exquisite par- 
terre, there should be some miserable patches of potatoes and 
beans, and some squalid clothes hung out to dry. Two ill- 
dressed children, but of delicate features, should be playing about 
an ugly neglected pool that had once been the basin to the foun- 
tain. But the foliage should be the chief thing, gaunt, gro- 
tesque, rare, beautiful, like an unkempt, uncared-for, lovely 
mountain girl. Underneath this picture : — * Property in the 
country, in chancery.' 

The companion picture, of course, should be : — ' Property in 
town, in chancery.' It should consist of two or three hideous, 
sordid, window-broken, rat-deserted, paintless, blackened houses, 
that should look as if they had once been too good company for 
the neighbourhood, and had met with a fall in life, not deplored 
by anyone. At the opposite corner should be a flaunting new 
gin-palace. I do not know whether I should have the heart to 
bring any children there, but I would if I could. 



Friends in Council. lyg 

The reader will discern that the author of Friends in 
Council has lost nothing of his power of picturesque 
description, and nothing of his horror of the abuses 
and cruelties of the law. And the passage may serve 
to remind of the touching, graphic account of the 
country residence of a reduced family in the Companions 
of my Solitude* Ellesmere assures Milverton that he 
shall not be asked to see a single picture ; and that if 
Milverton will bring Blanche and Mildred with him, 
he will himself go and see seven of the chief sewers in 
seven of the chief towns. The appeal to the sani- 
tarian's feelings is successful ; the bargain is struck ; 
and we next find the entire party sauntering, after an 
early German dinner, on the terrace of some small 
town on the Rhine, — Dunsford forgets which. Mil- 
verton, Ellesmere, and Mr. Midhurst are smoking, 
and we commend their conversation on the soothing 
power of tobacco to the attention of the Dean of 
Carlisle. Dean Close, by a bold figure, calls tobacco 
a ' gorging fiend.' Milverton holds that smoking is 
perhaps the greatest blessing that we owe to the dis- 
covery of America. He regards its value as abiding 
in its power to soothe under the vexations and troubles 
of life. While smoking, you cease to live almost 
wholly in the" future, which miserable men for the 
most part do. The question arises, whether the sor- 
rows of the old or the young are the most acute ? It 
is admitted that the sorrows of children are very over- 
whelming for the time, but they are not of that varied, 

* Chap. rv. 

N 2 



mmm 



1 80 Friends in Council. 

perplexed, and bewildering nature which derives much 
consolation from smoke. Ellesmere suggests, very 
truthfully, that the feeling of shame for having done 
anything wrong, or even ridiculous, causes most acute 
misery to the young. And, indeed, who does not 
know, from personal experience, that the sufferings of 
children of even four or five years old are often quite 
as dreadful as those which come as the sad heritage of 
after years ? We look back on them now, and smile 
at them as we think how small were their causes. 
Well, they were great to us. We were little creatures 
then, and little things were relatively very great. ' The 
sports of childhood satisfy the child : ' the sorrows of 
childhood overwhelm the poor little thing. We think 
a sympathetic reader would hardly read without a tear 
as well as a smile, an incident in the early life of 
Patrick Fraser Tytler, recorded in his recently pub- 
lished biography. When five years old, he got hold 
of the gun of an elder brother, and broke the spring of 
its lock. What anguish the little boy must have en- 
dured, what a crushing sense of having caused an 
irremediable evil, before he sat down and printed in 
great letters the following epistle to his brother, the 
owner of the gun — c Oh, Jamie, think no more of 
guns, for the main-spring of that is broken, and my 
heart is broken ! ' Doubtless the poor little fellow 
fancied that all the remainder of his life he never 
would feel as he had felt before he touched the un- 
lucky weapon. Doubtless the little heart was just as 
full of anguish as it could hold. Looking back over 
many years, most of us can remember a child crushed 



Friends in Council. 181 

and overwhelmed by some sorrow which it thought 
could never be got over, and can feel for our early self 
as though sympathising with another personality. 

The upshot of the talk which began with tobacco 
was, that Milverton was prevailed upon to write an 
essay on a subject of universal interest to all civilised 
beings, an essay on Worry. He felt, indeed, that he 
should be writing it at a disadvantage ; for an essay on 
worry can be written with full effect only by a tho- 
roughly worried man. There was no worry at all in 
that quiet little town on the Rhine ; they had come 
there to rest, and there was no intruding duty that 
demanded that it should be attended to. And probably 
there is no respect in which that great law of the 
association of ideas, that like suggests like, holds more 
strikingly true than in the power of a present state of 
mind, or a present state of outward circumstances, to 
bring up vividly before us all such states in our past 
history. We are depressed, we are worried : and 
when we look back, all our departed days of worry 
and depression appear to start up and press themselves 
upon our view to the exclusion of anything else, so 
that we are ready to think that we have never been 
otherwise than depressed and worried all our life. 
But when more cheerful times come, they suggest 
only such times of cheerfulness, and no effort will 
bring back the worry vividly as when we felt it. It is 
not selfishness or heartlessness ; it is the result of an 
inevitable law of mind that people in happy circum- 
stances should resolutely believe that it is a happy 
world after all j for looking back, and looking around, 



1 82 Friends in Council. 

the mind refuses to take distinct note of anything that 
is not somewhat akin to its present state. Milverton 
wrote an excellent essay on Worry on the evening of 
that day ; but he might possibly have written a better 
one at Worth-Ashton on the evening of a day on 
which he had discovered that his coachman was steal- 
ing the corn provided for the carriage horses, or 
galloping these animals about the country at the dead 
of night to see his friends. We must have a score of 
little annoyances stinging us at once to have the undi- 
luted sense of being worried. And probably a not 
wealthy man, residing in the country, and farming a 
few acres of ground by means of somewhat unfaithful 
and neglectful servants, may occasionally find so many 
things going wrong at once, and so many little things de- 
manding to be attended to. at once, that he shall expe- 
rience worry in as high a degree as it can be felt by 
mortal. Thus truthfully does Milverton's essay begin : — 

The great characteristic of modern life is Worry. 

If the Pagan religion still prevailed, the new goddess, in whose 
honour temples would be raised and to whom statues would be 
erected in all the capitals of the world, would be the goddess 
Worry. London would be the chief seat and centre of her sway. 
A gorgeous statue, painted and enriched after the manner of the 
ancients (for there is no doubt that they adopted this practice, 
however barbarous it may seem to us), would be set up to the 
goddess in the West-end of the town : another at Temple Bar, 
of less ample dimensions and less elaborate decoration, would 
receive the devout homage of worshippers who came to attend 
their lawyers in that quarter of the town : while a statue, on 
which the cunning sculptor should have impressed the marks of 
haste, anxiety, and agitation, would be sharply glanced up at, 
with as much veneration as they could afford to give to it, by the 
eager men of business in the City. 



Friends in Council. 183 

The goddess Worry, however, would be no local deity, wor- 
shipped merely in some great town, like Diana of the Ephesians ; 
but, in the market-places of small rural communities, her statue, 
made somewhat like a vane, and shifting with every turn of the 
wind, would be regarded with stolid awe by anxious votaries 
belonging to what is called the farming interest. Familiar 
too and household would be her worship ; and in many a snug 
home where she might be imagined to have little potency, small 
and ugly images of her would be found as household gods — the 
Lares and Penates — near to the threshold, and ensconced above 
the glowing hearth. 

The poet, always somewhat inclined to fable, speaks of Love 
as ruling 

The court, the camp, the grove, 
And men below, and heaven above j 

but the dominion of Love, as compared with that of Worry, 
would be found in the number of subjects, as the Macedonian' 
to the Persian — in extent of territory, as the county of Rutland 
to the empire of Russia. 

Not verbally accurate is the quotation from the Lay 
of the Last Minstrel, we may remark j but we may 
take it for granted that no reader who has exceeded 
the age of twenty-five will fail to recognise in this 
half-playful and half-earnest passage the statement of a 
sorrowful fact. And the essay goes on to set forth 
many of the causes of modern worry with all the 
knowledge and earnestness of a man who has seen 
much of life, and thought much upon what he has 
seen. The author's sympathies are not so much with the 
grand trials of historical personages, such as Charles V., 
Columbus, and Napoleon, as with the lesser trials and 
cares of ordinary men ; and in the following paragraph 



184 Friends in Council. 

we discern at once the conviction of a clear head and 
the feeling of a kind heart : — 

And the ordinary citizen, even of a well-settled state, who, 
with narrow means, increasing taxation, approaching age, failing 
health, and augmenting cares, goes plodding about his daily- 
work thickly bestrewed with trouble and worry (all the while, 
perhaps, the thought of a sick child at home being in the back- 
ground of his mind), may also, like any hero of renown in the 
midst of his world-wide and world-attracting fortune, be a beau- 
tiful object for our sympathy. 

There is indeed no more common error, than to 
estimate the extent of suffering by the greatness of the 
causes which have produced it; we mean their great- 
ness as regards the amount of notice which they 
attract. The anguish of an emperor who has lost his 
empire, is probably not one whit greater than that of a 
poor lady who loses her little means in a swindling 
Bank, and is obliged to take away her daughter from 
school and to move into an inferior dwelling. Nor is 
it unworthy of remark, in thinking of sympathy with 
human beings in suffering, that scrubby-looking little 
men, with weak hair and awkward demeanour, and 
not in the least degree gentlemanlike, may through 
domestic worry and bereavement undergo distress 
quite as great as heroic individuals six feet four inches 
in height, with a large quantity of raven hair, and with 
eyes of remarkable depth of expression. It is probable, 
too, that in the lot of ordinary men a ceaseless and 
countless succession of little worries does a great deal 
more to fret away the happiness of life than is done by 
the few great and overwhelming misfortunes which 



Friends in Council. 185 

happen at long intervals. You lose your child, and 
your sorrow is overwhelming ; but it is a sorrow on 
which before many months you look back with a sad 
yet pleasing interest, and k is a sorrow which you 
know you are the better for having felt. But petty 
unfaithfulness, carelessness, and stupidity on the part 
of your servants ; little vexations and cross-accidents 
in your daily life ; the ceaseless cares of managing a 
household and family, and possibly of making an effort 
to maintain appearances with very inadequate means ; 
— all those little annoying things which are not misfor- 
tune but worry, effectually blister away the enjoyment 
of life while they last, and serve no good end in respect 
to mental and moral discipline. c Much tribulation,' 
deep and dignified sorrow, may prepare men for ' the 
kingdom of God : ' but ceaseless worry, for the most 
part, does but sour the temper, jaundice the views, and 
embitter and harden the heart. 

' The grand source of worry,' says our author, 
c compared with which perhaps all others are trivial, 
lies in the complexity of human affairs, especially in 
such an era of civilisation as our own.' There can be 
no doubt of it. In these modern days, we are encum- 
bered and weighed down with the appliances, physical 
and moral, which have come to be regarded as essential 
to the carrying forward of our life. We forget how 
many thousands of separate items and articles were 
counted up, as having been used, some time within 
the last few years, by a dinner-party of eighteen persons, 
at a single entertainment. What incalculable worry 
in the procuring, the keeping in order, the using, the 



1 86 Friends in Council. 

damage, the storing up, of that enormous complication 
of china, glass, silver, and steel ! We can well ima- 
gine how a man of simple tastes and quiet disposition, 
worried even to death by his large house, his numerous 
servants and horses, his quantities of furniture and 
domestic appliances, all of a perishable nature, and all 
constantly wearing out and going wrong in various 
degrees, might sigh a wearied sigh for the simplicity 
of a hermit's cave and a hermit's fare, and for c one 
perennial suit of leather.' Such a man as the Duke of 
Buccleuch, possessing enormous estates, oppressed by 
a deep feeling of responsibility, and struggling to main- 
tain a personal supervision of all his intricate and mul- 
titudinous belongings, must day by day undergo an 
amount of worry which the philosopher would probably 
regard as poorly compensated by a dukedom and three 
hundred thousand a year. He would be a noble bene- 
factor of the human race who should teach men how 
to combine the simplicity of the savage life with the 
refinement and the cleanliness of the civilised. We 
fear it must be accepted as an unquestionable fact, 
that the many advantages of civilisation are to be ob- 
tained only at the price of countless and ceaseless 
worry. Of course, we must all sometimes sigh for 
the woods and the wigwam ; but the feeling is as vain 
as that of the psalmist's wearied aspiration, c Oh that 
I had wings like a dove : then would I flee away and 
be at rest ! ' Our author says, 

The great Von Humboldt went into the cottages of South 
American Indians, and, amongst an unwrinkled people, could 
with difficulty discern who was the father and who was the son, 
when he saw the family assembled together. 



Friends in Council. 187 

And how plainly the smooth, cheerful face of the 
savage testified to the healthfullness, in a physical sense, 
of a life devoid of worry ! If you would see the re- 
verse of the medal, look at the anxious faces, the knit 
brows, and the bald heads, of the twenty or thirty 
greatest merchants whom you will see on the Exchange 
of Glasgow or of Manchester. Or you may find more 
touching proof of the ageing effect of worry, in the 
careworn face of the man of thirty with a growing 
family and an uncertain income ; or the thin figure 
and bloodless cheek which testify to the dull weight 
ever resting on the heart of the poor widow who goes 
out washing, and leaves her little children in her poor 
garret under the care of one of eight years old. But 
still, the cottages of Humboldt's ' unwrinkled people ' 
were, we have little doubt, much infested with vermin, 
and possessed a pestilential atmosphere ; and the 
people's freedom from care did but testify to their 
ignorance and to their lack of moral sensibility. We 
must take worry, it is to be feared, along with civilisa- 
tion. As you go down in the scale of civilisation you 
throw off worry by throwing off the things to which 
it can adhere. And in these days, in which no man 
would seriously think of preferring the savage life, with 
its dirt, its stupidity, its listlessness, its cruelty, the 
good we may derive from that life, or any life approxi- 
mating to it, is mainly that of a sort of moral alterative 
and tonic. The thing itself would not suit us, and 
would do us no good ; but we may be the better for 
musing upon it. It is like a refreshing shower-bath, it 
is like breathing a cool breeze after the atmosphere of 



1 88 Friends in Council. 

a hot-house, to dwell for a little with half-closed eyes 
upon pictures which show us all the good of the un- 
worried life, and which say nothing of all the evil. 
We know the thing is vain : we know it is but an 
idle fancy ; but still it is pleasant and refreshful to 
think of such a life as Byron has sketched as the life 
of Daniel Boone. Not in misanthropy, but from the 
strong preference of a forest life, did the Kentucky 
backwoodsman keep many scores of miles ahead of the 
current of European population setting onwards to the 
West. We should feel much indebted to any reader 
who will tell us where to find anything more delightful 
than the following stanzas, to read after an essay on 
modern worry : — 

He was not all alone : around him grew 

A sylvan tribe of children of the chase ; 
Whose young, unwakened world was ever new, 

Nor sin, nor sorrow, yet had left a trace 
On her unwrinkled brow ; nor could you view 

A frown on Nature's or on human face : 
The free-born forest found and kept them free, 
And fresh as is a torrent or a tree. 

And tall, and strong, and swift of foot were they, 
Beyond the dwarfing city's pale abortions : 

Because their thoughts had never been the prey 

Of care or gain : the green woods were their portions. 

No sinking spirits told them they grew grey, 
No fashion made them apes of her distortions j 

Simple they were, not savage, and their rifles, 

Though very true, were yet not used for trifles. 

Motion was in their days, rest in their slumbers, 
And cheerfulness the handmaid of their toil : 

Nor yet too many, nor too few their numbers, 
Corruption could not make their hearts her soil : 



Friends in Council. 189 

The lust which stings, the splendour which encumbers, 

With the free foresters divide no spoil : 
Serene, not sullen, were the solitudes 
Of this unsighing people of the woods. 

The essay on Worry is followed by an interesting 
conversation on the same subject, at the close of which 
we are heartily obliged to Blanche for suggesting one 
pleasant thought ; to wit, that children for the most 
part escape that sad infliction ; it is the special 
heritage of comparatively mature years. And Mil- 
verton replies : — 

Yes : I have never been more struck with that than when ob- 
serving a family in the middle class of life going to the sea-side. 
There is the anxious mother wondering how they shall manage 
to stow away all the children when they get down. Visions of 
damp sheets oppress her. The cares of packing sit upon her 
soul. Doubts of what will become of the house when it is left 
are a constant drawback from her thoughts of enjoyment ; and 
she confides to the partner of her cares how willingly, if it were 
not for the dear children, she would stay at home. He, poor 
man, has not an easy time of it. He is meditating over the ex- 
pense, and how it is to be provided for. He knows, if he has 
any knowledge of the world, that the said expense will somehow 
or other exceed any estimate he and his wife have made of it. He 
is studying the route of the journey, and is perplexed by the 
various modes of going. This one would be less expensive, but 
would take more time ; and then time always turns into expense 
on a journey. In a word, the old birds are as full of care and 
trouble as a hen with ducklings ; but the young birds ! some of 
them have never seen the sea before, and visions of unspeakable 
delight fill their souls — visions that will almost be fulfilled. The 
journey, and the cramped accommodation, and the packing, and 
the everything out of place, are matters of pure fun and antici- 
pated joy to them. 

We have lingered all this while upon the first 



i go Friends in Council. 

chapter of the work : the second contains an essay and 
conversation on War. Of this chapter we shall say 
nothing except that it is earnest and sound in its views, 
and especially worthy of attentive consideration at the 
present time. The third chapter is one which will 
probably be turned to with interest by many readers ; 
it bears the title of A Love Story. Dunsford, a keen 
though quiet observer, has discovered that Ellesmere 
has grown fond of Mildred, though the lawyer was not 
likely to disclose his love. Dunsford suspects that 
Mildred's afFections are set on Milverton, as he has 
little doubt those of Blanche are. Both girls are very 
loving to Dunsford, whom they call their uncle, though 
he is no relation, and the old clergyman determines to 
have an explanation with Mildred. He manages to 
walk alone with her through the unguarded orchards 
which lie along the Rhine ; and there, somewhat 
abruptly, he begins to moralise on the grand passion. 
Mildred remarks what a happy woman she would have 
been whom Dunsford had loved ; when the lucky 
thought strikes him that he would tell her his own 
story, never yet told to anyone. And then he tells it, 
very simply and very touchingly. Like most true 
stories of the kind, it has little incident ; but it con- 
stituted the romance, not yet outlived, of the old 
gentleman's existence. He and a certain Alice were 
brought up together. Like many of the most success- 
ful students, Dunsford hated study, and was devoted to 
music and poetry, to nature and art. But he knew 
his only chance of winning Alice was to obtain some 
success in life, and he devoted himself to study. Who 



Friends in Council. igi 

does not feel for the old man recalling the past, and, as 
he remembered those laborious days, saying to the girl 
by his side, c Always reverence a scholar, my dear ; if 
not for the scholarship, at least for the suffering and 
the self-denial which have been endured to gain the 
scholar's proficiency ? ' His only pleasure was in 
correspondence with Alice. He succeeded at last. 
He took his degree, being nearly the first man of his 
year in both of the great subjects of examination ; and 
he might now come home with some hope of having 
made a beginning of fortune. A gay young fellow, a 
cousin of Alice, came to spend a few days ; and of 
course this lively, thoughtless youth, without an effort 
carried off the prize of all poor Dunsford's toils. You 
never win the thing on which your heart is set and your 
life staked ; it falls to some one else who cares very 
little about it. It is poor compensation that you get 
something you little care for which would have made 
the happiness of another man. Dunsford discovers 
one evening, in a walk with Alice, the frustration of all 
his hopes : — 

Alice and I were alone again, and we walked out together in 
the evening. We spoke of my future hopes and prospects. I 
remember that I was emboldened to press her arm. She returned 
the pressure, and for a moment there never was, perhaps, a 
happier man. Had I known more of love, I should have known 
that this evident return of affection was anything but a good 
sign ; ' and,' continued she, in the unconnected manner that you 
women sometimes speak, ' I am so glad that you love dear Henry. 
Oh, if we could but come and live near you when you get a 
curacy, how happy we should all be ! ' This short sentence was 
sufficient. There was no need of more explanation. I knew all 



ig% Friends in Council. 

that had happened, and felt as if I no longer trod upon the firm 
earth, for it seemed a quicksand under me. 

The agony of .that dull evening, the misery of that long 
night ! I have sometimes thought that unsuccessful love is almost 
too great a burden to be put upon such a poor creature as man. 
But He knows best ; and it must have been intended, for it is so 
common. 

The next day I remember I borrowed Henry's horse, and rode 
madly about, bounding through woods (I who had long for- 
gotten to ride) and galloping over open downs. If the animal 
had not been wiser and more sane than I was, we should have 
been dashed to pieces many times, And so by sheer exhaustion 
of body I deadened the misery of my mind, and looked upon 
their happy state with a kind of stupefaction. In a few days I 
found a pretext for quitting my home, and I never saw your 
mother again, for it was your mother, Mildred, and you are not 
like her, but like your father, and still I love you. But the great 
wound has never been healed. It is a foolish thing, perhaps, 
that any man should so doat upon a woman, that he should never 
afterwards care for any other, but so it has been with me ; and 
you cannot wonder that a sort of terror should come over me 
when I see anybody in love, and when I think that his or her love 
is not likely to be returned. 

Who would have thought that Dunsford, with his 
gaiters, lying on the grass listening cheerfully to the 
lively talk of his two friends, or sitting among his bees 
repeating Virgil to himself, or going about among his 
parishioners, the ideal of prosaic content and usefulness, 
had still in him this store of old romance ? In asking 
the question, all we mean is to remark an apparent 
inconsistency : we have no doubt at all of the philo- 
sophic truth of the representation. Probably it is only 
in the finer natures that such early fancies linger with 
appreciable effect. We do not forget the perpetually 
repeated declarations of Mr. Thackeray ; we did not 



Friends in Council. 193 

read Mr. Gilfil's Love Story for nothing; we remember 
the very absurd incident which is told of Dr. Chalmers, 
who in his last years testified his remembrance of an 
early sweetheart by sticking his card with two wafers 
behind a wretched little silhouette of her. And it is 
conceivable that the tenderest and most beautiful re- 
miniscences of a love of departed days may linger with 
a man who has grown grey, fat, and even snuffy. 
But it is only in the case of remarkably tidy, neat, and 
clever old gentlemen that such feelings are likely to 
attract much sympathy from their juniors. Possibly 
this world has more of such lingering romance than is 
generally credited. Possibly with all but very stolid 
and narrow natures, no very strong feeling goes without 
leaving some trace. 

Pain and grief 
Are transitory things no less than joy ; 
And though they leave us not the men <we nvere, 
Yet they do leave us. 

Possibly it is not without some little stir of heart 
that most thoughtful aged persons can revisit certain 
spots, or see certain days return. And the affection 
which would have worn itself down into dull common- 
place in success, by being disappointed and frustrated, 
lives on in memory with diminished vividness, but 
with increasing beauty, which the test of actual fact 
can never make prosaic. Dunsford tells Mildred what 
was his great inducement to make this continental 
tour. Not the Rhine ; not the essays nor the conver- 
sations of his friends. At the Palace of the Luxem- 
burg there is a fine picture, called Les illusions perdues. 

o 



194 Friends in Council. 

It is one of the most affecting pictures Dunsford ever 
saw. But that is not its peculiar merit. One girl in 
the picture is the image of what Alice was. 

The chief thing I had to look forward to in this journey we 
are making was, that we might return by way of Paris, and that 
I might see that picture again. You must contrive that we do 
return that way. Ellesmere will do anything to please you, and 
Milverton is always perfectly indifferent as to where he goes, so 
that he is not asked to see works of art, or to accompany a party 
of sight seers to a cathedral. We will go and see this picture 
together once ; and once I must see it alone. 

And a very touching sight it would be to one who 
knew the story, the grey-haired old clergyman looking, 
for a long while, at that young face. It would be in- 
deed a contrast, the aged man and the youthful figure 
in the picture. Dunsford never saw Alice again after 
his early disappointment : he never saw her as she grew 
matronly and then old ; and so, though now in her 
grave, she remained in his memory the same young 
thing for ever. The years which had made him grow old 
had wrought not the slightest change upon her. And 
Alice, old and dead, was the same on the canvas still. 

Dunsford's purpose in telling his love story was to 
caution Mildred against falling in love with Milverton. 
She told him there was no danger. Once, she frankly 
said, she had .long struggled with her feelings, not only 
from natural pride, but for the sake of Blanche, who 
loved Milverton better and would be less able to con- 
trol her love. But she had quite got over the struggle; 
and though now intensely sympathising with her 
cousin, she felt she never could resolve to marry him. 
So the conversation ended satisfactorily ; and then a 



Friends in Council. 195 

short sentence shows us a scene, beautiful, vivid, and 
complete : — 

We walked home silently amidst the mellow orchards glowing 
ruddily in the rays of the setting sun. 

The next chapter contains an Essay and conversa- 
tion on Criticism : but its commencement shows us 
Dunsford still employed in the interests of his friends. 
He tells Milverton that Blanche is growing fond of 
him. We can hardly give Milverton credit for sin- 
cerity or judgment in being 'greatly distressed and 
vexed.' For once he was shamming. All middle- 
aged men are much flattered and pleased with the 
admiration of young girls. Milverton declared that 
the thing must be put a stop to ; that c the idea of a 
young and beautiful girl throwing her affections away 
upon a faded widower like himself was absurd.' How- 
ever, as the days went on. Milverton began to be ex- 
tremely attentive to Blanche j asked her opinion about 
things quite beyond her comprehension ; took long 
walks with her, and assured Dunsford privately that 
c Blanche had a great deal more in her than most 
people supposed, and that she was becoming an excel- 
lent companion.' Who does not recognise the process 
by which clever men persuade themselves into the 
belief that they are doing a judicious thing in marrying 
stupid women ? 

The chapter which follows that on Criticism con- 
tains a conversation on Biography^ full of interesting 
suggestions which our space renders it impossible for 
us to quote ; but we cannot forego the pleasure of 
2 



196 



Friends in Council. 



extracting the following paragraphs. It is Milverton 
who speaks : — 

During Walter's last holidays, one morning after breakfast he 
took a walk with me. I saw something was on the boy's mind. 
At last he suddenly asked me, * Do sons often write the lives of 
fathers ? ' — ' Often,' I replied, l but I do not think they are the 
best kind or biographers, for you see, "Walter, sons cannot well 
tell the faults and weaknesses of their fathers, and so filial bio- 
graphies are often rather insipid peiformances.' — ' I don't know 
about that,' he said ; ' I think I could write yours. I have 
made it already into chapters.' — e Now then, my boy,' I said, 
i begin it : let us have the outline at least.' Walter then com- 
menced his biography. 

' The first chapter,' he said, ' should be you and I and Henry 
walking amongst the trees and settling which should be cut 
down, and which should be transplanted.' — 'A very pretty chap- 
ter,' I said, ' and a great deal might be made of it.' — ' The 
second chapter,' he continued, ' should be your going to the 
farm, and talking to the pigs.' — ' Also a very good chapter, my 
dear.' — 'The third chapter,' he said, after a little thought, 
' should be your friends. I would describe them all, and what 
they could do.' There, you see, Ellesmere, you would come in 
largely, especially as to what you could do. c An excellent 
chapter,' I exclaimed, and then of course I broke out into some 
paternal admonition about the choice of friends, which I know 
will have no effect whatever, but still one cannot help uttering 
these paternal admonitions. 

' Now then,' I said, ' for chapter four.' Here Walter paused, 
and looked about him vaguely for a minute or two. At length 
he seemed to have got hold of the right idea, for he burst out 
with the words, ' My going back to school ; ' and that, it seemed, 
was to be the end of the biography. 

Now, was there ever so honest a biographer ? His going back 
to school was the ' be-all and end-all here ' with him, and he re- 
solved it should be the same with his hero, and with everybody 
concerned in the story. 

Then see what a pleasant biographer the boy is ! He does not 



Friends in Council. 197 

drag his hero down through the vale of life, amidst declining 
fortune, breaking health, dwindling away of friends, and the 
usual dreariness of the last few stages. Neither does the bio- 
graphy end with the death of his hero ; and, by the way, it is 
not very pleasant to have one's children contemplating one's 
death, even for the sake of writing one's life ; but the biographer 
brings the adventures of his hero to an end by his own going 
back to school. How delightful it would be if most biographers 
planned their works after Walter's fashion ! — just gave a picture 
of their hero at his farm, or his business ; then at his pleasure, as 
Walter brought me amongst my trees j then, to show what man- 
ner of man he was, gave some description of his friends 5 and 
concluded by giving an account of their own going back to 
school — a conclusion that is greatly to be desired for many of 
them. 

When we begin to copy a passage from this work 
we find it very difficult to stop. But the thoughtful 
reader will not need to have it pointed out to him how 
much sound wisdom is conveyed in that playful form. 
And here is excellent advice as to the fashion in which 
men may hope to get through great intellectual labour : 
says Ellesmere, 

I can tell you in a very few words how all work is done. 
Getting up early, eating vigorously, saying i No ' to intruders 
resolutely, doing one thing at a time, thinking over difficulties at 
odd times, i. e. when stupid people are talking in the House ot 
Commons, or speaking at the Bar, not indulging too much in 
affections of any kind which waste the time and energies, care- 
fully changing the current of your thoughts before you go to 
bed, planning the work of the day in the quarter of an hour 
before you get up, playing with children occasionally, and avoid- 
ing fools as much as possible : that is the way to do a great deal 
of work. 

Milverton remarks, with justice, that some practical 
advices as to the way in which a working man might 



198 Friends in Council, 

succeed in avoiding fools were very much to be desired, 
inasmuch as that brief direction contains the whole 
art of life; and suggests, with equal justice, that the 
taking of a daily bath should be added to Ellesmere's 
catalogue of appliances which aid in working. 

We cannot linger upon the remaining pages which 
treat of Biography, nor upon two interesting chapters 
concerning Proverbs. It may be noticed, however, 
that Ellesmere insists that the best proverb in the 
world is the familiar English one, c Nobody knows 
where the shoe pinches but the wearer;' while Mil- 
verton tells us that the Spanish language is far richer 
in proverbs that that of any other nation. But we 
hasten to an essay which will be extremely fresh and 
interesting to all readers. We have had many essays 
by Milverton : here is one by Ellesmere. He had 
announced some time before his purpose of writing an 
essay on The Arts of Self- Advancement, and Mildred, 
whom Ellesmere took a pleasure in annoying by mak- 
ing a parade of mean, selfish, and cynical views, dis- 
cerned at once that in such an essay he would have an 
opportunity of bringing together a crowd of these, and 
declared before Ellesmere began to write it that it 
would be c a nauseous essay.' The essay is finished 
at length. The friends are now at Salzburg ; and on 
a very warm day they assembled in a sequestered spot 
whence they could see the snowy peaks of the Tyrolese 
Alps. Ellesmere begins bv deprecating criticism of 
his style, declaring that anything inaccurate or un- 
grammatical is put in on purpose. Then he begins to 
read : — 



Friends in Council, igg 

In the first place, it is desirable to be born north of the Tweed 
(I like to begin at the beginning of things) ; and if that cannot 
be managed, you must at least contrive to be born in a mode- 
rately-sized town — somewhere. You thus get the advantage of 
being favoured by a small community without losing any indi- 
vidual force. If I had been born in Atfpuddle — Milverton in 
Tolpuddle — and Dunsford in Tollerporcorum (there are such 
places, at least I saw them once arranged together in a petition 
to the House of Commons), the men of Affpuddle, Tolpuddle, 
and Tollerporcorum would have been proud of us, would have 
been true to us, and would have helped to push our fortunes. I 
see, with my mind's eye, a statue of Dunsford raised in Toller- 
porcorum. You smile, I observe ; but it is the smile of igno- 
rance, for let me tell you, it is of the first importance not to be 
born vaguely, as in London, or in some remote country house. If 
you cannot, however, be born properly, contrive at least to be 
connected with some small sect or community, who may consider 
your renown as part of their renown, and be always ready to 
favour and defend you. 

After this promising introduction Ellesmere goes on 
to propound views which in an extraordinary way- 
combine real good sense and sharp worldly wisdom 
with a parade of all sorts of mean shifts and con- 
temptible tricks whereby to take advantage of the 
weakness, folly, and wickedness of human nature. 
Very characteristically he delights in thinking how he 
is shocking and disgusting poor Mildred : of course 
Dunsford and Milverton understand him. And the 
style is as characteristic as the thought. It is unques- 
tionably Ellesmere to whose essay we are listening ; 
Milverton could not and would not have produced such 
a discourse. We remember to have read in a review, 
published several years since, of the former series of 
Friends in Council^ that it was judicious in the author 



200 Friends in Council. 

of that work, though introducing several friends as 
talking together, to represent all the essays as written 
by one individual ; because, although he could keep 
up the individuality of the speakers through a conver- 
sation, it was doubtful whether he could have succeeded 
in doing so through essays purporting to be written by 
each of them. We do not know whether the author 
ever saw the challenge thus thrown down to him : but 
it is certain that in the present series he has boldly 
attempted the thing, and thoroughly succeeded. And 
it may be remarked that not one of Ellesmere's pro- 
positions can be regarded as mere vagaries — every one 
of them contains truth, though truth put carefully in 
the most disagreeable and degrading way. Who does 
not know how great an element of success it is to be- 
long to a sect or class which regard your reputation as 
identified with their own, and cry you up accordingly ? 
It is to be admitted that there is the preliminary diffi- 
culty of so far overcoming individual envies and 
jealousies as to get your class to accept you as their 
representative ; but once that end is accomplished the 
thing is done. As to being born north of the Tweed, 
a Scotch Lord Chancellor and a Scotch Bishop of 
London are instructive instances. And however much 
Scotchmen may abuse one another at home, it cannot 
be denied that all Scotchmen feel it a sacred duty to 
stand up for every Scotchman who has attained to 
eminence beyond the boundaries of his native land. 
Scotland indeed, in the sense in which Ellesmere uses 
the phrase, is a small community ; and a community of 
very energetic, self-denying, laborious, and determined 



Friends in Council. 201 

men, with very many feelings in common which they 
have in common only with their countrymen, and with 
an invincible tendency in all times of trouble to re- 
member the old cry of Highlandmen shoulder to shoulder! 
Let the ambitious reader muse on what follows : — 

Let your position be commonplace, whatever you are yourself. 
If you are a genius, and contrive to conceal the fact, you really 
deserve to get on in the world, and you will do so, if only you 
keep on the level road. Remember always that the world is a 
place where second-rate people mostly succeed : not fools, nor first- 
rate people. 

Cynically put, no doubt, but admirably true. A 
great blockhead will never be made an archbishop ; 
but in ordinary times a great genius stands next to him 
in the badness of his chance. After all, good sense 
and sound judgment are the essentially needful things 
in all but very exceptional situations in life — and for 
these commend us to the safe, steady-going, common- 
place man. It cannot be denied that the great mass 
of mankind stand in doubt and fear of people who are 
wonderfully clever. What an amount of stolid, self- 
complacent, ignorant, stupid, conceited respectability 
is wrapped up in the declaration concerning any person, 
that he is c too clever by half ! ' How plainly it teaches 
that the general belief is that too ingenious machinery 
will break down in practical working, and that most 
men will do wrong who have the power to do it ! 

The following propositions are true in very large 
communities, but they will not hold good in the 
country or in little towns : — 

Remember always that what is real and substantive ultimately 
has its way in this world. 



202 Friends in Council. 

You make good bricks for instance : it is in vain that your 
enemies prove that you are a heretic in morals, politics, and reli- 
gion ; insinuate that you beat your wife ,• and dwell loudly on the 
fact that you failed in making picture frames. In so far as you 
are a good brickmaker, you have all the power that depends on 
good brick-making ; and the world will mainly look to your 
positive qualities as a brickmaker. 

After having gone on with a number of maxims of a 
very base, selfish, and suspicious nature, to the increas- 
ing horror of the girls, who are listening, Ellesmere 
passes from the consideration of modes of action to a 
much more important matter : — 

Those who wish for self-advancement should remember that 
the art in life is not so much to do a thing well as to get a thing 
that has been moderately well done largely talked about. Some 
foolish people, who should have belonged to another planet, give 
all their minds to doing their work well. This is an entire 
mistake. This is a grievous loss of power. Such a method of 
proceeding may be very well in Jupiter, Mars, or Saturn, but is 
totally out of place in this puffing, advertising, bill-sticking part 
of creation. To rush into the battle of life without an abund- 
ance of kettledrums and trumpets is a weak and ill-advised 
adventure, however well-armed and well-accoutred you may be. 
As I hate vague maxims, I will at once lay down the propor- 
tions in which force of any kind should be used in this world. 
Suppose you have a force which may be represented by the 
number one hundred : seventy-three parts at least of that force 
should be given to the trumpet ; the remaining twenty-seven parts 
may not disadvantageously be spent in doing the thing which is 
to be trumpeted. This is a rule unlike some rules in grammar, 
which are entangled and controlled by a multitude of vexatious 
exceptions ; but it applies equally to the conduct of all matters 
upon earth, whether social, moral, artistic, literary, political, or 
religious. 

Ellesmere goes on to sum up the personal qualities 



Friends in Council. 203 

needful to success ; and having sketched out the 
character of a mean, crafty, sharp, energetic rascal, he 
concludes by saying that such a one 

will not fail to succeed in any department of life — provided 
always he keeps for the most part to one department, and does 
not attempt to conquer in many directions at once. I only hope 
that, having profited by this wisdom of mine, he will give me a 
share of the spoil. 

Thus the essay ends ; and then the discourse thereon 
begins — 

Milverton. Well, of all the intolerable wretches and 
blackguards 

Mr. Midhurst. A conceited prig, too ! 

Dunsford. A wicked, designing villain ! 

Ellesmere. Any more : any more ? Pray go on, gentle- 
men 5 and have you, ladies, nothing to say against the wise man 
of the world that I have depicted ? 

And yet the upshot of the conversation was that, 
though given in a highly disagreeable and obtrusively 
base form, there was much truth in what Ellesmere 
had said. It is to be remembered that he did not 
pretend to describe a good man, but only a successful 
one. And it is to be remembered likewise that prudence 
verges toward baseness ; and that the difference between 
the suggestions of each lies very much in the fashion in 
which these suggestions are put and enforced. As to 
the use of the trumpet, how many advertising tailors 
and pill-makers could testify to the soundness of Elles- 
mere's principle ? And beyond the Atlantic it finds 
special favour. When Barnum exhibited his mermaid, 
and stuck up outside his show-room a picture of 



504 Friends in Council. 

three beautiful mermaids, of human size, with flowing 
hair, basking upon a summer sea, while inside the 
show-room he had the hideous little contorted figure 
made of a monkey with a fish's tail attached to it, 
probably the proportion of the trumpet to the thing 
trumpeted was even greater than seventy-three to 
twenty-seven. Dunsford suggests, for the comfort of 
those who will not stoop to unworthy means for obtain- 
ing success, the beautiful saying that c Heaven is 
probably a place for those who have failed on earth.' 
And Ellesmere, adhering to his expressed views, 
declares — 

If you had attended to them earlier in life, Dunsford would 
now be Mr. Dean ; Milverton would be the Right Honorable 
Leonard Milverton, and the leader of a party ; Mr. Midhurst 
would be chief cook to the Emperor Napoleon ; the bull-dog 
would have been promoted to the parlour ; I, but no man is wise 
for himself, should have been Lord Chancellor ; Walter would 
be at the head of his class without having any more knowledge 
than he has at present ; and as for you two girls, one would 
be a Maid of Honour to the Queen, and the other would have 
married the richest man in the .country. 

We have not space to tell how Ellesmere planned 
to get Mr. Midhurst to write an essay on the Miseries 
of Human Life ; nor how at Treves, upon a lowering 
day, the party, seated in the ancient amphitheatre, 
heard it read \ nor how fully, eloquently, and not un- 
fairly, the gloomy man, not without a certain solemn 
enjoyment, summed up his sad catalogue of the ills 
that flesh is heir to ; nor how Milverton agreed in 
the evening to speak an answer to the essay, and show 
that life was not so miserable after all ; nor how Elles- 



Friends in Council. 505 

mere, eager to have it answered effectively, determined 
that Milverton should have the little accessories in his 
favour, the red curtains drawn, a blazing woodfire, and 
plenty of light ; nor how, before the answer began, he 
brought Milverton a glass of wine to cheer him ; nor 
how Milverton endeavoured to show that in the present 
system misery was not quite predominant, and that 
much good in many ways came out of ill. Then we 
have some talk about Pleasantness ; and Dunsford is 
persuaded to write and read an essay on that subject, 
which he read one morning, ' while we were sitting 
in the balcony of an hotel, in one of the small towns 
that overlook the Moselle, which was flowing beneath 
in a reddish turbid stream.' In the conversation which 
follows, Milverton says — 

It is a fault certainly to which writers are liable, that of 
exaggerating the claims of their subject. 

And how truly is that said ! Indeed we can quite 
imagine a very earnest man feeling afraid to think too 
much and long about any existing evil, for fear it should 
greaten on his view into a thing so large and pernicious 
that he should be constrained to give all his life to the 
wrestling with that one thing, and attach to it an im- 
portance which would make his neighbours think him 
a monomaniac. If you think long and deeply upon 
any subject, it grows in magnitude and weight : if you 
think of it too long, it may grow big enough to exclude 
the thought of all things beside. If it be an existing 
and prevalent evil you are thinking of, you may come 
to fancy that if that one thing could be done away, it 



2o6 Friends in Council. 

would be well with the human race, — all evil would 
go with it. We can sympathise deeply with that man 
who died a short while since, who wrote volume after 
volume to prove that if men would only leave off stoop- 
ing, and learn to hold themselves upright, it would be 
the grandest blessing that ever came to humanity. We 
can quite conceive the process by which a man might 
come to think so, without admitting mania as a cause. 
We confess, for ourselves, that so deeply do we feel 
the force of the law Milverton mentions, there are 
certain evils of which we are afraid to think much, for 
fear we should come to be able to think of nothing else, 
and of nothing more. 

Then a pleasant chapter, entitled Lovers' Quarrels, 
tells us how matters are progressing with the two pairs. 
Milverton and Blanche are going on most satisfactorily; 
but Ellesmere and Mildred are wayward and hard to 
keep right. Ellesmere sadly disappointed Mildred by 
the sordid views he advanced in his essay, and kept 
advancing in his talk ; and like a proud and shy man 
of middle age when in love, he was ever watching for 
distant slight indications of how his suit might be 
received, and rendered fractious by the uncertainty of 
Mildred's conduct and bearing. And probably women 
have little notion by what slight and hardly thought-of 
sayings and doings they may have repressed the decla- 
ration and the offer which might perhaps have made 
them happy. Day by day Dunsford was vexed by 
the growing estrangement between two persons who 
were really much attached ; and this unhappy state of 
matters might have ended in a final separation but for 



Friends in Council. 207 

the happy incident recorded in the chapter called 
Rowing down the River Moselle. The party had 
rowed down the river, talking as usual of many 
things : — 

It was just at this point of the conversation that we pulled in 
nearer to the land, as Walter had made signs that he wished now 
to get into the boat. It was a weedy rushy part of the river 
that we entered. Fixer saw a rat or some other creature, which 
he was wild to get at. Ellesmere excited him to do so, and the 
dog sprang out of the boat. In a minute or two Fixer became 
entangled in the weeds, and seemed to be in danger of sinking. 
Ellesmere, without thinking what he was about, made a hasty 
effort to save the dog, seized hold of him, but lost his own balance 
and fell out of the boat. In another moment Mildred gave me the 
end of her shawl to hold, which she had wound round herself, 
and sprang out too. The sensible diplomatist lost no time in 
throwing his weighty person to the other side of the boat. The 
two boatmen did the same. But for this move the boat would, 
in all probability, have capsized, and we should all have been 
lost. Mildred was successful in clutching hold of Ellesmere ; 
and Milverton and I managed to haul them close to the boat and 
to pull them in. Ellesmere had not relinquished hold of Fixer. All 
this happened, as such accidents do, in almost less time than it 
takes to describe them. And now came another dripping crea- 
ture splashing into the boat ; for Master Walter, who can swim 
like a duck, had plunged in directly he saw the accident, but too 
late to be of any assistance. 

Things are now all right ; and Ellesmere next day 
announces to his friends that Mildred and he are 
engaged. Two chapters, on Government and Despotism 
respectively — the latter, perhaps, from the nature of the 
subject and its exhaustive treatment, the most valuable 
essay in the volumes — give us the last thoughts of the 
Friends abroad ; then we have a pleasant picture of 



20 8 Friends in Council. 

them all in Milverton's farm-yard, under a great syca- 
more, discoursing cheerfully of country cares. The 
closing chapter of the book is on The Need for Tolerance. 
It contains a host of thoughts which we should be glad 
to extract ; but we must be content with a wise saying 
of Milverton's : — 

For a man who had been rigidly good to be supremely tolerant 
would require an amount of insight which seems to belong only 
to the greatest genius. 

For we hardly sympathise with that which we have 
not in some measure experienced ; and the great thing, 
after all, which makes us tolerant of the errors of other 
men is the feeling that under like circumstances we 
should have ourselves erred in like manner ; or, at all 
events, the being able to see the error in such a light 
as to feel that there is that within ourselves which 
enables us at least to understand how men should 
in such a way have erred. The sins on which 
we are most severe are those concerning which our 
feeling is, that we cannot conceive how any man 
could possibly have done them. And probably such 
would be the feeling of a rigidly good man concerning 
every sin. 

So we part for the present from our Friends, not 
without the hope of again meeting them. We have 
been listening to the conversation of living men \ and, in 
parting, we feel the regret that we should feel in quitting 
a kind friend's house after a pleasant visit, not, perhaps, 
to be renewed for many a day. And this is a changing 
world. We have been breathing the old atmosphere, 



Friends in Council, 209 

and listening to the old voices talking in the old way. 
We have had new thought and new truth, but pre- 
sented in the fashion we have known and enjoyed for 
years. Happily, we can repeat our visit as often as we 
please, without the fear of worrying or wearying ; for 
we may open the. book at will. And we shall hope for 
new visits likewise. Milverton will be as earnest and 
more hopeful ; Ellesmere will retain all that is good, and 
that which is provoking will now be softened down. 
No doubt by this time they are married. Where have 
they gone ? The continent is unsettled, and they have 
often already been there. Perhaps they have gone to 
Scotland ? No doubt they have. And perhaps before 
the leaves are sere we may find them out among the 
sea lochs of the beautiful Frith of Clyde, or under the 
shadow of Ben Nevis. 



zio 



VI. 

EDGAR ALLAN POE.* 

WE must go back to the days of the early dra- 
matists — of Marlowe, Dekker, Ford,Massinger, 
and Otway — before we shall find in the history of 
literature any parallel to the wild and morbid genius, 
and the reckless and miserable life and death of Edgar 
Allan Poe. Never was there a sadder story than that 
of his wayward and infatuated youth, his wasted oppor- 
tunities, his estranged friends, his poverty-stricken man- 
hood, his drunken degradation, his despairing efforts to 
reform, his gradual sinking into lower and lower depths 
of misery, till at last he died of delirium tremens in a 
hospital, at the age of thirty-eight. And his poetical 
genius, his extraordinary analytic power, his imagi- 
nation that revelled in the realm of the awful, the weird, 
and the horrible, his utter lack of truth and honour, 
his inveterate selfishness, his inordinate vanity and 
insane folly, — all go to make a picture so strange and 

* The Works of the late Edgar Allan Poe : tvith a Memoir by Rnfus 
Wilmot Grisivold, and Notices of his Life and Genius by N. P. Willis and 
J. R. Lowell. In Four Volumes. New York : 1856. 



Edgar Allan Poe. 2, 1 1 

sad that it cannot easily be forgotten. We believe 
that this extraordinary man is but little known in this 
country ; and we think our readers may be interested 
by a few pages given to some account of his life and 
works. 

The American edition of Poe's works consists of 
four handsome volumes of five hundred pages each, 
which, as regards paper, printing, and binding, are very 
favourable specimens of transatlantic publishing. The 
first volume contains a memoir of Poe's life by Mr. 
Griswold, and notices of his genius by Mr. N. P. 
Willis and Mr. Lowell. Mr. Griswold gives us the 
severer estimate of Poe's life and character : Mr. 
Lowell and Mr. Willis appear anxious to say as much 
good of him as possible. There is something that 
relieves the dark colours in which Poe is usually de- 
picted, in the brief notice of him by his mother-in-law, 
prefixed to the work. She says — 

The late Edgar Allan Poe — who was the husband of my only- 
daughter, the son of my eldest brother, and more than a son to 
myself, in his long-continued and affectionate observance of every 
duty to me — under an impression that he might be called suddenly 
from the world, wrote (just before he left his home in Fordham 
for the last time, on the 29th of June, 1849) requesting that the 
Rev. Rufus W. Griswold would act as his literary executor, and 
superintend the publication of his works — and that N. P. Willis, 
Esq., should write such observations upon his life and character 
as he might deem suitable to address to thinking men in vindica- 
tion of his memory. 

From this statement of Mrs. Clemm, and from a 
statement made by Francis Osgood, it seems that 
those who knew Poe best were witnesses of a more 



2,12, Edgar Allan Poe. 

amiable aspect of his character. There is, unhappily, 
only one account of the melancholy phase of it which 
was known to the public. We are told by Mr. Willis 
that the slightest indulgence in intoxicating liquor was 
sufficient to convert Poe into a thorough blackguard — 
that ' with a single glass of wine his whole nature was 
reversed ; the demon became uppermost, and, though 
none of the usual signs of intoxication were visible, his 
will was palpably insane.' The only excuse which 
can be offered for much of Poe's life is, that he was 
truly not a responsible agent. He was morally, though 
not intellectually, insane. 

The father of Edgar^Allan Poe, when a law student, 
. eloped with an English actress named Elizabeth Arnold. 
After a time he married her. He became an actor, 
and acted along with his wife for six or seven years 
in various cities of the United States. At length his 
wife and he died, within a few weeks of each other, 
leaving two sons and a daughter utterly destitute. Edgar, 
their second child, was born at Baltimore in 1811. 
He was adopted by a wealthy merchant, one Mr. John 
Allan ; and Mr. Allan having no children, young Poe 
was generally regarded as destined to succeed to his 
fortune. The child was beautiful, precocious, high- 
spirited. He could brook no opposition, and Mr. 
and Mrs. Allan foolishly humoured him in every way. 
In J 8 16 he accompanied them to England, and was 
left for four or five years at school at Stoke Newington. 
In one of his tales Poe gives a striking description of 
his life here : — 

My earliest recollections of a school life are connected with a 



Edgar Allan Poe. 213 

large rambling Elizabethan house in a misty-looking village in 
England, where were avast number of gigantic and gnarled trees, 
and where all the houses were excessively ancient. In truth, it was a 
dream-like and spirit-soothing place, that venerable old town. At 
this moment, in fancy, I feel the refreshing chilliness of its deeply- 
shadowed avenues, inhale the pure fragrance of its thousand 
shrubberies, and thrill anew with undefinable delight at the deep 
hollow note of the church bell, breaking each hour with sullen 
and sudden roar, upon the stillness of the dusky atmosphere in 
which the fretted Gothic steeple lay imbedded and asleep. 

In 1822 he returned to America, and entered the 
University of Charlotteville. Here he was distinguished 
for ability, but still more for gambling, drunkenness, 
and other vices, which led to his being expelled. Mr. 
Allan had given him a very liberal allowance of money 
while at the University, but the reckless lad ran deeply 
in debt. He paid some large sums which he had lost 
in gambling with drafts upon Mr. Allan ; and Mr. 
Allan having refused to pay these, the ungrateful young 
man wrote him an insulting letter, and set off for 
Europe with the avowed intention of joining the Greek 
army, which was at that time engaged in war with the 
Turks. He never reached Greece ; but, after having 
disappeared for a year, he turned up at St. Petersburg, 
where the American Minister saved him from the 
penalties which he had incurred in some drunken 
brawl. 

He came back ©nee more to America ; and Mr. 
Allan, with extraordinary forbearance, once more re- 
ceived him kindly j and as Poe now expressed a desire 
to enter the army, he procured him admission to the 
Military Academy. Experience had taught poor Poe 



2 1 4 Edgar Allan Poe. 

no wisdom ; and, persevering in his vicious practices, 
in ten months he was cashiered and expelled. 

Mr. Allan's patience was not yet exhausted ; he 
again received the reckless scapegrace as a son. But 
there is a limit to all human endurance, and in a few 
months Poe was finally cast off by him. The first 
Mrs. Allan had died some time before, and Mr. Allan 
had married a young lady who, Poe assures us, might, 
as regards age, have been his grandchild. In that case, 
as Mr. Allan was just forty-eight, she must have been 
very young indeed. Poe's biographer insinuates that 
the last unpardonable provocation which led to Poe's 
final exclusion from Mr. Allan's house was in some 
way connected with this lady ; and the writer of an 
eulogium on Poe in an American newspaper says that 
the circumstances of the case 

throw a dark shade on the quarrel and a very ugly light on Poe's 
character. We shall not insert the story, because it is one of 
those relations which we think, with Sir Thomas Browne, should 
never be recorded. For of sins heteroclital, and such as want 
name or precedent, there is ofttimes a sin even in their history. 
We desire no record of enormities : sins should be accounted new. 

Perhaps it would have been better plainly to have 
stated wherein this last offence consisted. It is certain 
that the mysterious way in which the biography passes 
it by, as something too bad to be recorded, is calculated 
to damage Poe's reputation as much as any record of 
facts could do so. It is certain, too, that the offence was 
such as finally to exhaust the patience of a benefactor 
who had repeatedly forgiven every possible form of 
recklessness, debauchery, and insolence ; and when Mr. 



Edgar Allan Poe. 215 

Allan died in 1834 he left his fortune to his children 
by his second marriage, but not a farthing to Poe. 

From the time that he was finally cast off by Mr. 
Allan, Poe sought to support himself by literature ; 
and the remainder of his life is the melancholy story of 
a hack-writer's struggle for existence. At an early 
age he had published a little volume of poetry, which 
ran through several editions ; but when he first began 
to depend upon his contributions to the periodical press 
he was very unsuccessful. He had not steadiness to 
persevere in spite of discouragement ; and he enlisted 
in the army as a common soldier. He was soon 
recognised by some officers who had been with him at 
the Military Academy, and efforts were made to get 
him a commission. Just as these promised to be suc- 
cessful it was found that he had deserted. 

He disappeared for a while. After some months a 
prize was offered by the publisher of a Baltimore news- 
paper for the best tale. On the committee which was 
to award the prize meeting, the members of it were 
struck by the beauty of the handwriting of one of the 
tales offered in competition. And without reading any 
other of the manuscripts on which they were called to 
adjudicate, these upright and honourable judges resolved, , 
in a mere whim, that the prize should be given to c the 
first of geniuses who had written legibly.' The award 
was published on the 12th October, 1833; and the 
successful competitor proved to be Poe. Mr. Gris- 
wold's description of his appearance when he came to 
receive the prize gives us some notion of the state to 
which he had been reduced : — 



2 1 6 Edgar Allan Poe. 

Accordingly he was introduced ; the prize-money had not yet 
been paid ; and he was in the costume in which he had answered 
the advertisement of his good fortune. Thin, and pale even to 
ghastliness, his whcle appearance indicated sickness and the ut- 
most destitution. A well-worn frock-coat concealed the absence 
of a shirt, and imperfect boots disclosed the want of hose. But 
the eyes of the young man were luminous with intelligence and 
feeling, and his voice and conversation and manners all won upon 
the lawyer's regard. Poe told his history and his ambiticn ; and 
it was determined that he should not want means for a suitable 
appearance in society, nor opportunity for a just display of his 
abilities in literature. Mr. Kennedy accompanied him to a 
clothing store, and purchased for him a respectable suit, with 
changes of linen, and sent him to a bath, from which he returned 
with the suddenly regained style of a gentleman. 

His newly found friends were much interested in 
him, and lost no opportunity of serving him. They 
procured him literary occupation sufficient for his 
support; and in 1835 he was appointed editor of a 
journal published at Richmond in Virginia. Down 
to this time he was compelled by actual necessity 
to lead a sober life ; but upon receiving his first 
month's salary as editor he relapsed into his old 
habits. For a week, Mr. Griswold tells us, c he was 
in a condition of brutish drunkenness,' and his dis- 
missal followed. When he became sober he made 
many professions of repentance ; and Mr. White, 
the proprietor of the journal, agreed to give him 
another trial, with the understanding that c all engage- 
ments on his part should cease the moment Poe got 
drunk.' Poe did get drunk at intervals, c drinking 
till his senses were lost ; ' but Mr. White struggled 
on with him for upwards of a year. At the end of 



Edgar Allan Poe. 2,1 J 

that time Poe was finally dismissed. While holding 
his precarious place at Richmond, and with a . very- 
scanty income, he had married his cousin, Virginia 
Clemm, an amiable and beautiful girl, but quite devoid 
of that firmness of character which was requisite in 
the wife of such a man. 

He went from Richmond to Baltimore, and thence 
to Philadelphia and New York, trusting for support 
to his chances of success as a magazine writer and 
newspaper correspondent. In May, 1839, ne Decame 
editor of the Gentleman's Magazine of Philadelphia, 
and made a vigorous effort to begin a regular life. But 
moral stamina was entirely wanting, and before the 
close of summer he relapsed into his former courses, 
c and for weeks was regardless of everything but a 
morbid and insatiable appetite for the means of in- 
toxication.' The magazine was conducted in the 
most irregular way ; its proprietor on several occasions 
returning from some days' absence from home, after 
the day of publication was past, to find the magazine 
unfinished and Poe senselessly drunk. 

The story of Poe's connexion with several other 
periodicals might be told in the same words. In the 
autumn of 1844 he removed to New York. It was 
during his residence in Philadelphia that Mr. Griswold 
became acquainted with him. He says : — 

Poe's manner, except during his fits of intoxication, was very 
quiet and gentlemanly ; he was usually dressed with simplicity 
and elegance ; and when once he sent for me to visit him, 
during a period of illness caused by a protracted and anxious 
watching at the side of his sick wife, I was impressed by the sin- 
gular neatness and the air of refinement in his home. It was in a 



2 J 8 Edgar Allan Poe. 

small house, in one of the pleasant and silent neighbourhoods far 
from the centre of the town, and though slightly and cheaply 
furnished, everything in it was so tasteful, and so fitly disposed, 
that it seemed altogether suitable for a man of genius. For this, 
and for most of the comforts he enjoyed in his brightest as in his 
darkest years, he was chiefly indebted to his mother-in-law, who 
loved him with more than maternal devotion and constancy. 

Poe arrived at New York with a high literary re- 
putation. He had by this time written his most 
successful tales ; and soon after coming to New York 
he published his remarkable poem, The Raven, of which 
Mr. Willis has said, that — 

It is the most effective single example of fugitive poetry ever pub- 
lished in this country, and is unsurpassed in English poetry for 
subtle conception, masteriy ingenuity of versification, and con- 
sistent sustaining of imaginative lift. 

About this time he also wrote his well-known story 
entitled The Facts in the case of M. Valdemar, in 
which he gives a shockingly circumstantial and minute 
description of the use of mesmerism in the case of 
a dying man. This piece was translated into many 
languages, and caused much curious speculation in the 
philosophical world. 

In October, 1845, ne became the proprietor and 
editor of the New York Broadway "Journal. His 
irregular habits rendered him quite unfit for such a 
position ; and the last number of the journal was 
published at the close of the same year. He made 
some engagements to deliver public lectures, one to 
read a poem before the Boston Lyceum ; but he was 
generally drunk when the period for fulfilling these 



Edgar Allan Poe. 2, ig 

engagements arrived. We have some curious speci- 
mens of the tone in which literary criticism is con- 
ducted in America, in a controversy into which Poe 
got at this time with a certain Dr. Dunn English. 
Poe had published, as one of a series of sketches called 
The Literati of New York City^ an article reviewing 
the career of Dr. English, which Mr. Griswold admits 
was c entirely false in what purported to be its facts.' 
Dr. English retorted by publishing an account of 
Poe's life and character, very much to the disadvantage 
of the latter ; and wound up his article by a declaration 
that upon several occasions he had given Poe a sound 
horse-whipping. Poe returned to the charge in a 
paper which a New York journal was found willing 
to publish, in which, among other elegances of phrase, 
he describes Dr. English's attack upon himself as 
c oozing from the filthy lips of which a lie is the only 
natural language ! ' 

But Poe was now sinking fast into lower depths of 
infamy. Witness the following : — 

On one occasion he borrowed fifty dollars from a distinguished 
literary woman of South Carolina, promising to return it in a few 
days. When he failed to do so, and was asked for a written 
acknowledgment of the debt that might be exhibited to the 
husband of the friend who had thus served him, he denied all 
knowledge of it, and threatened to exhibit a correspondence which 
he said would make the woman infamous, if she said anything 
more on the subject. Of course there never had been any such 
correspondence. But when Poe heard that a brother of the slan- 
dered party was in quest of him for the purpose of taking satis- 
faction, he sent for Dr. Francis, and induced him to carry to that 
gentleman his retractation and apology, with a statement, which 
seemed true enough at the moment, that Poe was out of his head. 



ZZO 



"Edgar Allan Foe. 



And Mr. Griswold tells us that those familiar with 
Poe's career can recal too many similar anecdotes. 

In the autumn of 1846 the New York Express 
contained an appeal to the public on behalf of Poe 
and his wife, who were now at Fordham, some miles 
from the city, in want of the common necessaries of 
life. Mr. N. P. Willis seconded this appeal by a 
generous paper in the Home "Journal; and the con- 
tributions which flowed in relieved Poe's necessities 
for the time. His wife died a few weeks later ; and 
magazine writing, as before, occupied him till the 
beginning of 1848. Early in that year he delivered, 
before a brilliant auditory at New York, his extra- 
ordinary discourse upon the Cosmogony of the Uni- 
verse, which he called Eureka^ a Prose Poem. He 
utterly denied in it the value of the inductive philosophy, 
and proposed to construct a theory of nature which 
should be dictated merely by c that divinest instinct, 
the sense of beauty.' His views, we need hardly say, 
in so far as they can be reduced to comprehensibility, 
are the most preposterous rubbish. 

In August, 1849, P° e went fr° m New York to 
Philadelphia. Here, for several days, he abandoned 
himself to excesses so shocking that his biographer 
leaves them to be imagined. Reduced to actual beggary, 
he asked in charity the means of leaving the city, and 
proceeded to Richmond, in Virginia. Here he seems 
to have awakened to the degradation of his position ; 
and he made a last desperate effort to begin a new life. 
He joined a teetotal society, and for several weeks 
conducted himself with perfect propriety. He delivered 



Edgar Allan Poe. 2,2,1 

two lectures in several of the towns of Virginia. He 
became engaged to marry a lady whom he had known 
in his youth, and who certainly evinced much greater 
courage than, discretion in forming an engagement so 
perilous ; and he wrote to his friends that he was 
about to settle for the remainder of his days amid the 
scenes where he had passed his youth. We give the 
conclusion of the miserable history in Mr. Griswold's 
words : — 

On Thursday, the 4th of October, he set out for New York 
to fulfil a literary engagement, and to prepare for his marriage. 
Arriving in Baltimore, he gave his trunk to a porter, with direc- 
tions to convey it to the cars which were to start in an hour or 
two for Philadelphia, and went into a tavern to obtain some re- 
freshment. Here he met acquaintances who invited him to drink; 
all his resolutions and duties were forgotten; in a few hours he was 
in such a state as is commonly induced only by long-continued in- 
toxication. After a night of insanity and exposure he was carried 
to an hospital, and there, on the evening of Sunday, the 7th oi 
October, 1849, he died, at the age of thirty-eight years. 

Thus perished one of the most singular geniuses 
which America has produced. From the very be- 
ginning of his career there seems to have been some 
insane infatuation upon him. He was the very ideal 
of a black sheep. He was bad and wretched through- 
out. Through his whole life there never was a time 
when, for more than two or three weeks, he promised 
to become anything better. His sky never brightened. 
We feel that it would have been his salvation to have 
been put under some external control ; he was not fit 
to be his own master. His will was in complete abey- 
ance. Still, his genius ought not to be suffered to blind 



2,2,2, 



Edgar Allan P 



oe. 



us to his guilt. Among the vulgar victims of drunken- 
ness there is probably not one who cannot declare, as 
truthfully as Poe could have declared, that he is abso- 
lutely a slave to that degrading vice, and that the most 
honest efforts cannot emancipate him. Let us be 
thankful that it does not rest with any human tribunal 
to decide how far such a man is responsible to eternal 
justice. It is plain that, as regards human laws, even 
the hereditary victim of an invincible tendency must 
be held as sufficiently free to be accountable. 

There is nothing of the lues Boswelliana about 
Mr. Griswold. He states with the greatest frankness 
the sins and scandals of the man who entrusted to 
him the vindication of a memory which sorely needed 
vindicating, if it were possible. It is curious, indeed, 
how little pains the biographer takes to conceal the 
shortcomings of his hero. He appears to have felt 
that any attempt to do so would have been vain. He 
says — 

De mortuis nil nisi bonum is a common and an honourable sen- 
timent, but its proper application would lead to the suppression 
of the histories of half of the most conspicuous of mankind. In 
this case it would be impossible, on account of the notoriety of 
Mr. Poe's faults ; and it would be unjust to the living, against 
whom his hands were always raised, and who had no resort 
but in his outlawry from their sympathies. 

Mr. Griswold tells us that Poe was as deficient in 
literary honesty as in truthfulness in the ordinary rela- 
tions of life. c Some of his plagiarisms are scarcely 
paralleled for their audacity in all literary history.' 
Several of his most striking tales borrowed their entire 



Edgar Allan Poe. 2,2,3 

machinery from the writings of English authors. He 
got possession of a manuscript poem by Mr. Longfellow, 
and, much to the astonishment of that pleasing author, 
he published it, with some slight alteration, as his own. 
Longfellow having found fault with this appropriation, 
and having printed the piece with his own name, Poe, 
with extraordinary audacity, accused Longfellow of 
having stolen the poem from himself, and followed up 
the charge with c malignant criticism for many years.' 
He must have presumed a good deal upon American 
ignorance of English literature, when he published as 
his own a good deal of the prose of Coleridge. But 
his most remarkable plagiarism consisted in publishing 
at Philadelphia, as original, a work on Conchology, 
which was a reprint, almost verbatim, of The Text-book 
of Conchology , by Captain Thomas Brown, printed in 
Glasgow in 1833. Such dishonesty rarely fails of 
being discovered. The book was received with such 
unmistakeable disapprobation that in a second edition 
Poe's name was withdrawn from the title-page, and 
his initials only affixed to the preface. 

As a critic, Mr. Griswold recommends us to attach 
little weight to the opinions expressed by Poe : — 

His criticisms are of value to the degree in which they are de- 
monstrative ; but his unsupported assertions and opinions were so 
apt to be influenced by friendship or enmity, by the desire to 
please or the fear to offend, or by his constant ambition to sur- 
prise, or to produce a sensation, that they should be received in 
all cases with distrust of their fairness. A volume might be 
filled with literary judgments by him as antagonistic and incon- 
sistent as the sharpest antitheses. 



234 Edgar Allan Poe. 

Poe's vanity was extraordinary. He preserved with 
care everything that was published respecting himself 
and his works, and all letters of a complimentary 
character. In 1843 he wrote for a Philadelphia news- 
paper a sketch of his own life, ' many parts of which,' 
says Mr. Griswold, ' are untrue.' In particular, it 
contained several laudatory remarks upon Poe's writ- 
ings, purporting to be by Mr. Washington Irving 
and Miss E. B. Barrett, now Mrs. Browning. It is 
melancholy to think that this laudatory character was 
given them by grossly perverting them from the sense 
in which Mrs. Browning and Mr. Irving wrote. Mrs. 
Browning had written to Poe that her husband was 
struck much by the rhythm of The Raven ; poor Poe 
published, as an extract from Mrs. Browning's letter, 
that £ Mr. Browning is enthusiastic in his admiration of 
the rhythm.' To such wretched shifts did this un- 
happy genius stoop, in the hope of adding to his 
reputation. 

Mr. Griswold sums up his account of Poe in the 
following words : — 

He was at all times a dreamer, dwelling in ideal realms, in 
heaven or in hell, peopled with the creatures and accidents of his 
brain. He walked the streets, in madness or melancholy, with 
lips moving in indistinct curses, or with eyes upturned in pas- 
sionate prayer (never for himself, for he felt, or professed to feel, 
that he was already damned, but) for their happiness who at the 
moment were the objects of his idolatry ; or with his glances 
introverted to a heart gnawed with anguish, and with a face 
shrouded in gloom, he would brave the wildest storms, and all 
night, with drenched garments and arms beating the winds and 
rains, would speak as if to spirits that at such times only could 
be evoked by him from the Aidenn, close by whose portals his 



Edgar Allan Poe. 225 

disturbed soul sought to forget the ills to which his constitutior 
subjected him — close by the Aidenn where were those he loved — 
the Aidenn which he might never see, but in fitful glimpses, as 
its gates opened to receive the less fiery and more happy natures 
whose destiny to sin did not involve the doom of death. 

We have said we believe that Poe is little known or 
appreciated on this side of the Atlantic ; but in America 
there appears to be perfect unanimity of opinion both 
as to the nature and the rank of his genius. He was a 
true poet, though he wrote but little poetry; and his more 
successful pieces in verse produce an impression akin 
to that produced bv nearly all his prose. His power 
was confined almost entirely to the region of the awful, 
the mysterious, and the horrible ; and it seems as if his 
works, in their tone and colouring, were the faithful 
reflection of his own ordinary mood and order of 
thought. We know that, in many cases, the tone of 
a man's writings is no index whatever to his ordinary 
temperament. It is trite now-a-days to say that some 
of the most laughter-moving authors have been very 
melancholy men ; while some writers, whose works 
are distinguished by the most overdrawn sentiment, 
have been extremely prosaic in their real life. The 
author of The Man of Feeling was one of the hardest- 
headed of Scotch lawyers ; and when Goethe wrote 
The Sorrows of TVerter^ he had a keen eye to business, 
and was extremely fond of a good dinner. But in the 
case of Poe there seems to have been a real consistency 
between the tone of his writings and that of his usual 
feeling and thought. The dreary, ghastly, and appal- 
ling fancies of which his tales are for the most part made 



226 Edgar Allan P 



06. 



up seem to have been a faithful reflection of his own 
dreary, ghastly, and appalling thoughts. 

We have said that he wrote but little poetry. He 
was compelled by the exigencies of his life to produce 
such literary material as might procure the daily bread. 
He wrote verse very slowly, and his best poems are 
finished with extraordinary care ; though the wonderful 
flow of his rhythm has nothing of the constraint of visi- 
ble elaboration. It is curious to observe his anxiety to 
do away the impression that his verse was composed 
under the influence of anything like poetic inspiration. 
He gives us, in one of his prose pieces, a most minute 
account of the process by which he built up his most 
popular poem, The Raven. It is so seldom that a poet 
is found willing to admit his readers behind the scenes, 
and to explain to them the nature of the machinery by 
which his effects are produced, that we shall give some 
account of this paper, which is called The Philosophy of 
Composition. 

Poe appears desirous to exhibit every cord and 
pulley, every sheet of daubed canvas, and every trap- 
door in his theatre ; and to assure us that the sul- 
phureous glare thrown over the whole picture is 
nothing more than a red light in a sceneshifter's 
hand : — 

For my own part (he says) I have no desire that it should be 
understood that I compose by a species of fine frenzy — an ecstatic 
intuition 5 nor have I at any time the least difficulty in recalling 
to mind the progressive steps of any of my compositions ; and 
since the interest of an analysis or reconstruction, such as I have 
considered a desideratum, is quite independent of any real or 
fancied interest in the thing analyzed, it will not be regarded as a 



Edgar Allan Foe. 2,2,7 

breach of decorum on my part to show the modus operandi by 
which some one of my own works was put together. I select The 
Raven, as most generally known. It is my design to render it 
manifest that no one point in its composition is referable either to 
accident or intuition ; that the work proceeded step by step, to 
its completion, with the precision and rigid consequence of a 
mathematical problem. 

We shall give the several steps of the process by 
which,, as its author assures us, The Raven was turned 
out. 

First, for certain reasons not mentioned, he was 
particularly anxious to write a poem which should suit 
at once the popular and the critical taste. 

The question then came to be, How long should a 
poem be, in order to its producing the greatest possible 
impression ? The conclusion was, that it should be 
so brief as to be easily read at a sitting ; more minutely, 
that it ought to consist of about a hundred lines. The 
Raven actually consists of a hundred and eight. 

The next question was, What sort of impression 
was most likely to be most generally and deeply felt ? 
And the conclusion come to was, that for many 
reasons, stated somewhat prolixly, it must be an im- 
pression of sadness j the poem must be of a melancholy 
tone. 

The poet next considered whether there was any 
c artistic piquancy ' that might be introduced into the 
structure of the proposed poem, with the view of 
intensifying its effect ; and, after some reflection, he 
concluded that there was nothing which was so suitable 
for this purpose as the employment of the refrain. 

For full effect, the refrain must be brief 5 and that 
-2 a 



228 Edgar Allan Foe. 

its application might be varied, while literally it remained 
unaltered, it was convenient that it should consist of a 
single word. The use of the refrain implied that the 
poem should be divided into stanzas. 

What was the refrain to be ? It must be sonorous 
and emphatic. Then the long o is the most sonorous 
vowel, in connexion with r as the most producible 
consonant. These considerations immediately sug- 
gested the word Nevermore. 

How was Nevermore to be brought in at the close of 
each stanza ? It would be awkward to have a single 
word monotonously repeated by a reasonable being. 
The refrain must therefore be uttered by a non-reason- 
ing creature capable of speech. A parrot was thought 
of first, but a raven appeared more in keeping with the 
tone of the intended poem. 

Now, gathering up his conclusions, Poe tells us he 
found that he had arrived at c the conception of a raven, 
a bird of ill omen, monotonously repeating the one 
word Nevermore at the conclusion of each stanza, in a 
poem of melancholy tone, and in length about one 
hundred lines.' 

Next came the inquiry, What is the saddest of all 
subjects ? The answer was, Death. And when is 
this melancholy subject most poetical? When most 
closely allied to Beauty. The subject of the poem 
must therefore be the death of a beautiful woman. And, 
as a further step, a bereaved lover is the fittest person 
to speak on such a subject. 

Combine now the ideas of a lover lamenting his 
mistress, and a raven repeating continuously Never- 



— 



Edgar Allan Poe. zzg 

?nore. Let the lover begfn by a commonplace query, 
to which the raven should thus answer : then a query 
less commonplace : then another query ; till at last, 
half in superstition and half in self-torture, he goes on 
to put questions whose solution he has passionately at 
heart, c receiving a frenzied pleasure in so modelling 
his questions as to obtain from the expected Nevermore 
the most delicious because the most intolerable of 
sorrow.' The last uttered Nevermore must involve the 
utmost conceivable amount of sorrow and despair. 
And at this point in the induction, Poe assures us he 
first ' put pen to paper,' and wrote the stanza : — 

' Prophet ! ' said I, e thing of evil — prophet still, if bird or devil ! 
By that heaven that bends above us — by that God we both 

adore — 
Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn, 
It shall clasp a sainted maiden, whom the angels name Lenore— 
Clasp a rare and radiant maiden, whom the angels name Lenore ?' 
Quoth the Raven, * Nevermore V 

This stanza was to form the climax of the poem ; 
and no other was permitted to be so vigorous. 

Originality in the rhythm and metre was also aimed 
at. And the author nattered himself that ' nothing even 
remotely approaching ' the stanza of The Raven ' has 
ever been attempted.' 

Where were the Raven and the lover to meet ? Not 
in the fields, for c circumscription of space is absolutely 
necessary to the effect of insulated incident ; — it has 
the force of a frame to a picture.' The meeting must 
be in the lover's chamber, which must be richly 
furnished. 



230 Edgar Allan P 



oe. 



The Raven must enter by the window. The night 
must be stormy. The bird must alight on a bust of 
Pallas — for contrast of marble and plumage,— because 
the lover is a scholar, — and because the name Pallas 
sounds well. 

The narrative part of the poem being completed, 
two concluding stanzas are added, which serve to cast 
a meaning upon all that has gone before. The Raven 
becomes emblematical ; c but it is not till the last line of 
the last stanza that the intention of making him emble- 
matical of mournful and never-ending remembrance is 
permitted distinctly to be seen :' 

And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting, 
On the pallid bust of Pallas, just above my chamber door j 
And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming, 
And the lamp-light o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the 

floor 5 
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor 
Shall be lifted — never more ! 

Had Poe been a person so reliable that we could 
feel assured that such was indeed the genesis of this 
celebrated poem, there would be much interest in the 
account of it which he gives us. For although it by no 
means follows that the process by which the mind of 
one man of genius matures a fine work, from the dawn 
of its first crude conception to the hour when it is 
finally turned out, totus^ teres^ et rotundus^ shall be the 
same as that by which another man of equal genius 
should produce a similar piece of work ; still it would 
be curious to know, from the confession of an author 
as intensely truthful as Dr. Arnold, for instance, how 



Edgar Allan Poe. 231 

it was that some admirable poem which bears with it 
all the marks of the true poetic inspiration was con- 
ceived, condensed, and elaborated. Unfortunately, in 
Poe's case we have not the slightest assurance that 
there is a syllable of truth in the long story he has told 
us, beyond that which may be afforded by the story's 
internal evidence of truthfulness. It is quite certain 
that if he thought it likely to c create a sensation ' in 
the public mind, Poe would have related the particulars 
with equal circumstantiality although they had been 
entirely false. We must rest, therefore, altogether on 
the internal evidence which may be afforded by the 
narrative itself: and it appears to iis that the osten- 
tatious parade of reasons, — the affectation of strict 
logical sequence in all the steps of the process of manu- 
facturing the poem, — are characteristics directly the 
contrary of those which we might expect in a true 
narrative, and bear a most suspicious resemblance to 
those of the highly circumstantial fictitious tales which 
proceeded from Poe's pen. The story, in short, is 
psychologically absurd and improbable in itself; and 
it derives no weight from the author's character, which 
may countervail its own unlikelihood. We believe 
that Poe, like all other authors, would have found it 
extremely hard to lay down the progressive steps by 
which any of his works was matured. 

We believe that nothing can be more anomalous or 
fortuitous than the manner in which this end is reached 
in various cases : the conception sometimes breaking 
sharply and suddenly upon the mental view, and at 
other times first looming indistinctly as a mountain 



232 Edgar Allan Poe. 

through morning mist, and gradually settling into vivid 
outline and detail. 

There is a good deal of mannerism in Poe's versifi- 
cation. He is very fond of making use of the refrain; 
and he sometimes lingers on the same lines and cadences 
in a way which palls upon the ear. The poem en- 
titled The Bells sets out with a peculiar music of its own; 
but before its close it has degenerated into something 
almost like nursery rhymes. Here is its first stanza : — 

Hear the sledges with the bells — 

Silver bells ! 
What a world of merriment their melody foretells ' 
How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle, 
In the icy air of night ! 
While the stars that oversprinkle 
All the heavens seem to twinkle 
With a crystalline delight ; 

Keeping time, time, time, 

In a sort of Runic rhyme, 
To the tintinnabulation that so musically swells 
From the bells, bells, bells, bells, 

Bells, bells, bells— 
From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells. 

The second stanza is given to wedding bells, the 
third to alarum bells, the fourth to bells tolled for the 
dead. It will require an admiration of Poe's poetry 
more enthusiastic than ours to discern anything but 
jingle and absurdity in the latter lines of this fourth verse. 
The c King of the Ghouls,' it appears, 'dances and yells ' 

To the throbbing of the bells, 

Of the bells, bells, bells,— 
To the sobbing of the bells ; 

Keeping time, time, time, 

As he knells, knells, knells, 



Edgar Allan Poe. 233 

In a happy Runic rhyme, 
To the rolling of the bells, 
Of the bells, bells, bells, 
To the tolling of the bells, 
Of the bells, bells, bells, bells, 
Bells, bells, bells,— 
To the moaning and the groaning of the bells. 

The flow of all Poe's verses is remarkable for ease 
and gracefulness : it is hardly ever hampered by the 
difficulties of rhyme and rhythm which exist to a great 
degree in the metres of which he makes use. The 
stanzas which we have already quoted from The Raven 
have afforded those readers who are not familiar with 
the poem some notion of the singular character of its 
measure. We shall quote another specimen of it : — 

But the Raven, sitting lonely on that placid bust, spoke only 
That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour : 
Nothing farther then he uttered ; not a feather then he flut- 
tered, — 
Till I scarcely more than muttered, ' Other friends have flown 

before, — 
On the morrow^ will leave me, as my hopes have flown before.' 
Then the bird said, ' Nevermore.' 

Startled at the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken, 
* Doubtless,' said I, * what it utters is its only stock and store, 
Caught from some unhappy master, whom unmerciful disaster 
Followed fast and followed faster, till his songs one burden 

bore, — 
Till the dirges of his hope that melancholy burden bore, 
Of " Never, Nevermore." ' 

Of the four large volumes which contain Poe's 
works, only a small portion of one is taken up by his 
poetry. That occupies no more than one hundred 
pages out of two thousand. The first volume consists 



.234 Edgar Allan Poe. 

of tales : the second contains the poetry, Eureka, 
one or two critical papers, and tales : the third 
volume is occupied by short critical sketches of al- 
most all the authors of America, and of a few Eng- 
lish authors, among whom are Macaulay, Dickens, 
Lever, and Mrs. Browning. The fourth volume con- 
tains a most shocking and repulsive tale of shipwreck 
and starvation at sea, entitled Arthur Gordon Pym, and 
more tales of a similar character to those in the pre- 
ceding volumes. Arthur Gordon Pym is Poe's only 
attempt at a narrative of any length. 

Mr. Griswold has forewarned us not to attach much 
weight to any of Poe's critical opinions ; and a perusal 
of his critical essays leads us to the belief that his 
ability did not at all lie in that way. They are almost 
entirely taken up by minute verbal fault-finding : there 
is hardly anything like the discussion of principles ; and 
many of the papers are evidently dictated by personal 
spite, and afford us a very unfavourable notion of the 
tone of American journalism. It is to be hoped that 
Poe's writings are not a fair specimen of the courtesy, 
or lack of courtesy, with which literary men across the 
Atlantic are wont to speak or write of one another. 
Of the editor of a rival magazine Poe remarks — 

Mr. Brown had, for the motto on his magazine cover, the 
words of Richelieu, 

Men call me cruel, — 
I am not ; — I am just. 
Here the two monosyllables * an ass 1 should have been ap- 
pended. They were no doubt omitted through one of those 

d d typographical blunders which, through life, have been at 

once the bane and antidote of Mr. Brown. — (Vol. iii. pp. 103-4.) 



Edgar Allan Poe. 2,35 

Equally unsatisfactory are the glimpses of American 
manners with which these critical papers furnish us. 
The following is Foe's account of a certain John W. 
Francis, whom Poe evidently regarded as a very 
Chesterfield : — 

His address is the most genial that can be conceived — its 
bonhommie irresistible. He never waits for an introduction to 
anybody ; slaps a perfect stranger on the back, and calls him 
* doctor ' or < learned Theban \ pats every lady on the head, and 
(if she be pretty and petite) designates her by some such title as 
1 My Pocket Edition of the Lives of the Saints ! ' 

But Poe's great power lay in writing tales, which 
rank in a class by themselves, and have their character- 
istics strongly defined. They inculcate no moral 
lesson ; they delineate no character ; they are utterly 
away from nature or experience : their sole end is to 
interest and excite ; and this end is aimed at for the 
most part by the use of all the appliances of horror. 
They are sometimes extremely coarse in taste, though 
never impure in morality. They are often calculated 
to jar on all human feeling; and when read they 
leave an indescribably eerie and strange impression 
upon the mind. Yet they possess such interest as 
spell-binds the reader ; and if read alone and late at 
night, we venture to say that one could as readily 
shake off" the nightmare as pause in the middle of one 
of these appalling narratives. There are some hu- 
morous tales, which are generally very unsuccessful ; 
though the effect of the serious is often heightened by 
the infusion of a grotesque and maniac mirth. Monk 
Lewis and Mrs. Radcliffe are nowhere in the race with 



2,36 Edgar Allan Poe. 

Poe. His imagination was so vivid that he appears to 
have seen all the horrors he describes ; and he sets 
them before his readers with such terrible graphic power 
that no nervous person should read his works except 
by broad daylight, and with a whole family in the room. 
He gives all his narratives an extraordinary veri-simili- 
tude by a circumstantiality of detail which surpasses 
that of Robinson Crusoe or Sir Edward Seaward ; and 
although the relation is almost always extravagant and 
impossible, one needs occasionally to pause and recol- 
lect, to avoid being carried away by the air of truthful- 
ness and simplicity with which the story is told. Some- 
times the interest is made to depend on following up 
a close chain of reasoning ; and often we find that 
description of magnificence and that gloating over 
imaginary wealth which are not unusual in the writings 
of men possessing a rich fancy amid the res angustce 
domi. And at all times the language in which the 
description or the narrative is carried on is almost un- 
paralleled for its exquisite clearness, precision, and 
nerve. 

We have already alluded to a piece entitled The 
Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar^ as one which excited 
great interest when it was published, and which was 
translated into almost all the languages of Europe. It 
is an example of the author's power of balancing an 
extraordinary and impossible narrative by an appearance 
of anxiety to tell the simple truth, and by minute 
circumstantiality in narrating it, which led to the story 
being very generally believed. 

M. Valdemar, a friend of Poe, was in the last stage 



Edgar Allan Poe. 2, 3 7 

of consumption. For some months Poe had been 
anxious for an opportunity of mesmerising some person 
in the act of death ; and having told this to M. Val- 
demar, the latter at once agreed that the operation 
might be tried upon himself, and promised to send a 
message to Poe twenty-four hours before the time 
announced by the physicians as that of his decease. 

One day Poe received a note from M. Valdemar 
that he could not hold out beyond to-morrow mid- 
night. He immediately hastened to the dying man's 
chamber. This was on Saturday evening, and the 
medical men declared that M. Valdemar would pro- 
bably die about midnight on Sunday. Valdemar 
was still desirous of being mesmerised ; and it was 
arranged that Poe, with a friend (one Mr. Theodore 

L 1), should come to him on Sunday evening at 

eight o'clock. This friend was to take notes of all 
that should pass. 

On Sunday evening, accordingly, M. Valdemar was 
mesmerised, being then in the last stage of physical 
exhaustion. The process was completed about mid- 
night. He remained in the mesmeric state till three 
a.m. Poe then asked him, c M. Valdemar, are you 
asleep ? ' In an audible whisper the answer was re- 
turned, e Asleep now, — I am dying.' The same 
answer was given still more faintly a few minutes 
later. The physicians thought it best that he should 
remain in this tranquil state until death should super- 
vene, which they anticipated in a few minutes. 

Poe repeated his question, 'Are you asleep ?' Even 
as he spoke a ghastly change passed over Valdemar, 



238 Edgar Allan Pee,. 

which is described with horrible minuteness. He was 
dead ; and his friends were turning away, leaving him 
to the nurses. 

Concluding that he was dead, we were turning away, when 
a strong vibratory motion was observable in the tongue. This 
continued for perhaps a minute. At the expiration of that 
period there issued from the distended and motionless jaws a 
voice — such as it would be madness in me to attempt describing. 
There are, indeed, two or three epithets which might be con- 
sidered as applicable to it in part ; I might say, for example, 
that the sound was harsh and broken and hollow ; but the 
hideous whole is indescribable, for the simple reason that no 
similar sounds have ever jarred upon the ear of humanity. 
There were two particulars, nevertheless, which I thought then, 
and still think, might fairly be stated as characteristic of the 
intonation — as well adapted to convey some idea of its unearthly 
peculiarity. In the first place, the voice appeared to reach our 
ears — at least mine — from a vast distance, or from some deep 
cavern within the earth. In the second place, it impressed me as 
gelatinous or glutinous matters impress the sense of touch. 

I have spoken both of sound and of voice. I mean to say that 
the sound was one of distinct — of even wonderfully-thrillingly 
distinct — syllabification. M. Valdemar spoke — obviously in reply 
to the question I had propounded to him a few minutes before. 
I had asked him, it will be remembered, if he still slept. He 
now said — 

' Yes — no — I have been sleeping 5 and now — and now — I am 
dead.'' 

No person present even affected to deny, or attempted to 
repress, the unutterable, shuddering horror which these few 
words, thus uttered, were so well calculated to convey. Mr. 

L 1 swooned. The nurses immediately left the chamber, and 

could not be induced to return. 

In this condition, dead, yet still held in a strange 
connection with Poe by the mesmeric influence, M. 



Edgar Allan Poe. 239 



Valdemar continued for seven months. Death was so 
far arrested. At the end of that time it was resolved 
to awaken him. Poe made the necessary passes, and 
then said — 

* M. Valdemar, can you explain to us what are your feelings 
or wishes now ? ' 

There was an instant return of the hectic circles on the 
cheeks 5 the tongue quivered, or rather rolled violently in the 
mouth, though the jaws and lips remained rigid as before. At 
length the same hideous voice which I have already described 
broke forth : — 

1 For God's sake, quick ! quick ! —put me to sleep, — or quick ! 
waken me '. — quick ! — I say to you that I am dead I ' 

I was thoroughly unnerved, and for an instant remained un- 
decided what to do. At first I made an endeavour to recompose 
the patient ; but failing in this, I retraced my steps, and earnestly 
struggled to awaken him. In this attempt I soon saw that I 
should be successful, and I am sure that all in the room were 
prepared to see the patient awaken. 

For what really occurred, however, it is quite impossible that 
any human being could have been prepared. 

As I rapidly made the mesmeric passes, amid ejaculations of 
' Dead ! dead ! ' actually bursting from the tongue, and not from 
the lips, of the sufferer, his whole frame at once — within the 
space of a single minute, or even less — shrunk, crumbled, actually 
rotted away beneath my hands. Upon the bed, before that whole 
company, there lay a nearly liquid mass of loathsome — of 
detestable putrescence. 

One of Poe's most striking tales is entitled A Descent 
into the Maelstrom. It is told, like most of his stories, 
in the first person. In company with an old Nor- 
wegian fisherman, the writer tells us he climbed to the 
top of an enormous crag upon the coast of Lofoden, 
commanding an extensive seaview : — 

We had caught no glimpse of the sea until it had burst upon 



2\o Edgar Allan Poe. 

us from the summit. As the old man spoke, I became aware of 
a loud and gradually increasing sound, like the moaning of a 
vast herd of buffaloes upon an American prairie 5 and at the 
same moment I perceived that what seamen call the chopping 
character of the ocean beneath us was rapidly changing into a 
current which set to the eastward. Even while I gazed this 
current acquired a monstrous velocity. In five minutes the whole 
sea, as far as Vurrgh, was lashed into ungovernable fury ; but 
it was between Moskoe and the coast that the main uproar 
held its sway. Here the vast bed of the waters, seamed and scarred 
into a thousand conflicting channels, burst suddenly into a frenzied 
convulsion —heaving, boiling, hissing — gyrating in gigantic and 
innumerable vortices, and all whirling and plunging on to the 
eastward with a rapidity which water never elsewhere assumes, 
except in precipitous descents. 

In a few minutes more there came over the scene another 
radical alteration. The general surface grew somewhat more 
smooth, and the whirlpools one by one disappeared, while pro- 
digious streaks of foam became apparent where none had been 
seen before. These streaks at length, spreading out to a great 
distance and entering into combination, took unto themselves the 
gyratory motion of the subsided vortices, and seemed to form the 
germ of another more vast. Suddenly — very suddenly — this 
assumed a distinct and definite existence, in a circle of more than 
a mile in diameter. The edge of the whirl was represented by a 
broad belt of gleaming spray ; but no particle of this slipped 
into the mouth of the terrific funnel, whose interior, as far as the 
eye could fathom it, was a smooth, shining, and jet-black wall 
of water, inclined to the horizon at an angle of some forty-five 
degrees, speeding dizzily round and round with a swaying and 
sweltering motion, and sending forth to the winds an appalling 
voice, half shriek, half roar, such as not even the mighty 
cataract of Niagara ever lifts up in its agony to heaven. 

The mountain trembled to its very base, and the rock rocked. 
I threw myself upon my face, and clung to the scant herbage in 
an excess of nervous agitation. 

1 This,' said I, at length, to the old man — * this can be nothing 
else than the great whirlpool of the Maelstrom.' 



Edgar Allan Poe. 241 

The old man goes on to tell how he himself, in a 
little schooner, with two of his brothers, had been 
sucked into this tremendous whirl, the description of 
which given by Poe is, we need hardly tell our readers, 
very greatly exaggerated. It appears that at the turn 
of the tide the whirl ceases for a few minutes, and 
venturesome fishermen run the risk, when the wind 
is fair and strong, of pushing right across the Mael- 
strom, A great round is thus saved, and the finest 
fish are taken in extraordinary quantity. The old 
man's watch had upon one occasion run down, and 
miscalculating the time, he and his brothers steered 
their little craft right upon the whirlpool. A terrible 
storm had uprisen suddenly, and the strom was in its 
most fearful power.. 

After flying before the wind, the schooner, on 
reaching the belt of fcam v/hich surrounds the whirl, 
suddenly turned off to one side,, and flew round with 
tremendous velocity. 

How often we made the circuit of the belt it is impossible for 
me to say. We careered round and round for perhaps an hour, 
flying rather than floating, getting gradually more and more into 
the centre of the surge, and then nearer and nearer to its horrible 
inner edge. At length we gave a wild, lurch to starboard, and 
rushed headlong into the abyss. I muttered a hurried prayer to 
God, and thought all was over. 

As I felt the sickening sweep of the descent I had instinctively 
tightened my hold upon the barrel, and closed my eyes. For 
some seconds I dared not open them — while I expected instant 
destruction, and wondered that I was not already in my death- 
struggles with the water. But moment after moment elapsed. 
I still lived. The sense of falling had ceased ; and the motion 
of the vessel seemed much as it had been before while in tliQ 

R 



242 Edgar Allan Poe. 

belt of foam, with the exception that she now lay more along. 
I took courage and looked once again upon the scene. 

Never shall I forget, the sensations of awe, horror, and admira- 
tion, with which I gazed about me. The boat appeared to be 
hanging, as if by magic, midway down, upon the interior sur- 
face of a funnel vast in circumference, prodigious in depth, and 
whose perfectly smooth sides might have been mistaken for 
ebony, but for the bewildering rapidity with which they spun 
round, and for the gleaming and ghastly radiance which they 
shot forth, as the rays of the full moon, from the circular rift 
among the clouds which I have already described, streamed in a 
flood of golden glory along the black walls, and far away down 
into the innermost recesses of the abyss. 

The rays of the moon seemed to search out the very bottom 
of the profound gulf ; but still I could make out nothing dis- 
tinctly, on account of a thick mist in which everything there was 
enveloped. This mist or spray was no doubt occasioned by the 
clashing of the great walls of the funnel, as they all met together 
at the bottom ; but the yell that went up to the heavens out of 
that abyss I dare not venture to describe. 

Looking about me upon the wide waste of liquid ebony in 
which we were thus borne, I perceived that our boat was not 
the only object in the embrace of the whirl. Both above and 
below us were visible fragments of vessels, large masses of 
building timber and trunks of trees, with many smaller articles, 
such as pieces of house furniture, broken boxes., barrels and 
staves. I have already described the unnatural curiosity which 
had taken the place of my original terrors. I now began to 
watch with a strange interest the numerous things that floated in 
our company. I must have been delirious, for I even sought amuse- 
ment in speculating upon the relative velocities of their several 
descents to the foam below. * This fir-tree,' I found myself at 
one time saying, ' will certainly be the next thing to plunge and 
disappear j 1 and then I was disappointed to find that the wreck 
of a Dutch merchant ship overtook it and went down before it. 

While in this position the old fisherman began to 
observe that the lighter objects in the whirl, such as 



Edgar Allan Poe. 243 

casks, were much longer in sliding down the slope of 
the funnel than heavy objects., such as the schooner. 
This afforded him some hope of escape. He therefore 
lashed himself to a cask and threw himself into the 
water, hoping that he might not be plunged into the 
abyss below before the turn of the tide : — 

The result was precisely what I had hoped it would be. It 
might have been an hour or thereabout, after my quitting the 
schooner, when, having descended to a vast distance below me, 
it made three or four wild gyrations in rapid succession, and, 
bearing my loved brother with it, plunged headlong, at once 
and for ever, into the chaos of foam below. The barrel to which 
I was attached sunk very little farther than half the distance be- 
tween the bottom of the gulf and the place where I leaped over- 
board, when a great change took place in the character of the 
whirlpool. The slope of the sides of the vast funnel became 
momently less and less steep. The gyrations of the whirl grew, 
gradually, less and less violent. By degrees, the froth and the mist 
disappeared, and the bottom of the gulf seemed slowly to uprise. 
The sky was clear, the wind had gone down, and the full moon 
was setting radiantly in the west, when I found myself on the 
surface of the ocean, in full view of the shores of Lofoden, and 
above the spot where the pool of the Moskoestrom had been. 

Of all Poe's tales, the one which he himself esteemed 
most highly is that entitled Ligeia. It is one of several 
which stand distinguished from his other tales by a 
peculiar character. In it, as in all his more powerful 
writings, the effect left on the mind is a feeling of awe 
and horror ; but this feeling is in Ligeia produced by 
metaphysical means. Instead of the physical terror of 
the story of M. Valdemar, or the circumstantial dread 
of such a tale as the Descent into the Maelstrom, we 
find in Ligeia and several other pieces strange and 



244 Edgar Allan Foe, 

daring plunges into regions of speculation which thrill 
u,s with a sense of the forbidden, — as though prying 
into Nature's mysteries in a fashion not meet for man. 
The story is as follows : it is told, like most of the 
others, in the first person ; the writer apparently having 
lost his own identity in the temporary conviction of 
the truth of what he tells. 

Accordingly the constantly-recurring / had married 
the Lady Ligeia, having met her in some old decaying 
city on the Rhine. There was always something 
strange about her : her husband never knew what was 
her paternal name. Her eyes had an expression which 
suggested, in a fashion which bewildered, dim remem- 
brances of some pre-existent state. Her beauty and 
learning were equally great : but her main characteristic 
was her tremendous strength of will. 

She gradually faded, in early youth ; but this won- 
derful volition appeared to struggle at every step with 
advancing death. She c wrestled with the advancing 
shadow with a desperate fierceness of resistance.' She 
was resolved that she would not leave her husband ; 
she was determined that she would not die. Death 
came, notwithstanding ; but in the last moment of life 
she sprang upon her feet and shrieked aloud those 
strangely suggestive words of Joseph Glanvill, c Man 
doth not yield himself to the angels, nor to death utterly, 
save only through the weakness of his. feeble will.'' She 
sank down, exhausted ; and as she breathed her last 
sigh, her husband heard a low murmur come from her 
lips. He bent his ear to them, and heard the same 
words repeated. 



Edgar Allan Poe. 245 

The husband sank into a morbid state, described 
with great power ; but after some time he again 
married. The dwelling where he and his wife lived, 
and the appearance of their chamber, are describe J 
with more than PoeY usual power of exciting a 
creeping sensation of awe. Mysterious sounds and 
footsteps were heard about that chamber. Strange 
shadows from invisible figures were cast upon its floor. 
After several mysterious fits of illness the second wife 
died, and her husband watched at night beside her 
shrouded form. 

As he sat he heard a low sob come from the bed 
of death. He watched in an agony of superstitious 
terror. After some minutes a feeble tinge of colour 
began to Hush the dead face. The husband thought 
that life was not gone, and used every means of 
restoring it. But in a very short time all signs of 
life had disappeared, and the body lay more dead in 
appearance than ever. 

An hour passed, and a sigh was again heard from 
the bed. The lips trembled and parted. A partial 
glow came over the forehead and cheek ; the heart 
feebly beat. The husband chafed and bathed temples 
and hands, and used every exertion which no little 
medical reading could suggest. But in vain. Suddenly 
the colour fled, and the pulsation ceased ; and in an 
instant the body assumed the appearance of that which 
has for many days been buried. 

Through that unspeakably horrible night, c time 
after time, until near the period oi the grey dawn, this 
hideous drama of revivification was repeated ; each 



2\G "Edgar Allan Foe. 

terrific relapse was only into a sterner and apparently 
more irredeemable death ; each agony wore the aspect 
of a struggle with some invisible foe ; and each struggle 
was preceded by I know not what of wild change in 
the personal appearance of the corpse.' 

Once more, as dawn approached, rising from a more 
appalling and hopeless dissolution than any before it, the 
dead stirred with a more vigorous life. The hues of 
life flushed up, the limbs relaxed ; and, ' rising from 
the bed, tottering with feeble steps, with closed eyes, 
and with the manner of one bewildered in a dream, the 
thing that was enshrouded advanced boldly and palpably 
into the middle of the apartment.' We give the rest 
in the writer's words : — 

I trembled not ; I stirred not ; for a crowd of unutterable 
fancies connected with the air, the stature, the demeanour, of the 
figure, rushing through my brain, had paralysed — had chilled 
me into stone. I stirred not, but gazed upon the apparition. 
There was a mad disorder in my thoughts — a tumult unappeas- 
able. Could it indeed be the living Rowena who confronted me ? 
Could it indeed be Rowena at ail — the fair-haired, blue-eyed 
Lady Rowena ? Then, why should I doubt it ? The bandage lay 
heavily about the mouth ; but then might it not be the mouth of 
the breathing Lady of Tremaine ? And the cheeks, — there 
were the roses as in her noon of life — yet these might be the fair 
cheeks of the living Lady c f Tremaine. But had she- then 
grown taller since her malady ? What inexpressible madness 
seized me with that thought ? One bound, and I had reached her 
feet ! shrinking from my touch she let fall from her head, un- 
loosened, the ghastly cerements which had confined it, and then 
streamed forth into the rushing atmosphere of the chamber huge 
masses of long and dishevelled hair ; it was blacker than the 
raven wings of midnight. ' And now slowly opened the eyes of 
the figure that stood before me. ' Here, then, at least/ I shrieked 



Edgar Allan Poe, 247 

aloud, * can I never, can I never be mistaken ; these are the full, 
and the black, and the wild eyes of my lost love — of the Lady — 
of the Lady Ligeia ! ' 

There is certainly something very thrilling in the 
minute description in this tale of the persevering and 
awful struggle of the Will to break the trammels of 
death, and in the strange gradual transformation of 
the second wife into the first. Poe prided himself 
much upon the psychical ingenuity of the conception. 
He tells us he regarded the piece as containing the 
highest-class thought which he had ever written. 

Our space forbids that we should give any further 
specimens of the wild and strange fictions which 
proceeded from the dark and distempered imagination 
of this miserable but extraordinary genius. Should any 
of our readers desire to extend their acquaintance with 
the works of Poe, we may refer them to the pieces 
entitled The Masque of the Red Death, The Tell-tale 
Hearty William Wilson, and The Fall of the House of 
Usher, as specimens of his power in the realm of the 
eerie and fearful \ and to the pieces entitled The 
Murders in the Rue Morgue, The Gold-bug, Hans 
Pfaal, and The Purloined Letter, as specimens of tales 
which draw their effect from their circumstantiality of 
detail and the closeness with which they follow up a 
train of reasoning. Hans Pfaal is the account of a 
voyage to the moon, given with such an appearance of 
truthful simplicity, and with such an apparent earnest- 
ness of desire to explain the precise rationale of every 
step in the process which brought the voyager to his 
destination, that one can almost fancy that the story 



348 Edgar Allan Foe, 

might, in many quarters, receive implicit credit. The 
sketches called The Domain of Arnheim and Lander's 
Cottage are remarkable examples of Poe's power of 
life-like description. 

On the whole, it appears to us that, whether we 
regard The character of Poe's genius, or the nature of 
his career, we are looking upon as sad and strange a 
phenomenon as can be found in literary history. Prin- 
ciple he seems to have had none. Decision of character 
was entirely lacking. / His envy of those more favoured 
by fortune than himself amounted to raging ferocit}4 
He starved his wife, and broke her heart. He estranged 
the friends who were most firmly resolved to hold by 
him. He foully slandered his best benefactors. He 
had no faith in man or woman. His biographer tells 
us that c he regarded society as composed altogether of 
villains.' He had no sympathy, no honour, no truth. 
And we carry with us from the contemplation of the 
entire subject the sad recollection of a powerful intellect, 
a most vivid imagination, an utterly evil heart, and a 
career of guilt, misery, and despair. 



249 



VII. 

GEORGE STEPHENSON AND THE RAILWAY.* 

ONCE upon a time, the idea called up before the 
mind's eye of an Englishman by the name of a 
Railway, was that of a rickety and uneven track, con- 
sisting of two parallel bars of cast-iron, with a horse-path, 
deeply indented and never repaired, between these two 
iron bars. Along this track a wretched horse, probably 
blind and certainly lame, drew three or four rudely- 
constructed wagons a few miles from the coal-pit 
where they were filled, to the wharf where their con- 
tents were tilted on shipboard. Even at that day the 
advantages of the railway were manifest ; for the poor 
animal already mentioned was able, without any con- 
siderable effort, to draw along this tram-road a burden 
four or five times as great as that which it could have 
drawn along an ordinary highway. Next there came 
a period when the steam-engine, at that time associated 
in the minds of most men with smoke, noise, and dirt, 
came to be employed to convey the wagons of coal 

* The Life of George Stephenson, Railway Engineer. By Samuel Smiles, 
London: 1857. 



2$o George Stephenson and the Railway. 

from the fields of proprietors of an enterprising turn and 
with a taste for novelty. The engine made use of was 
extremely heavy and clumsy : it gave forth horrible 
screams as of a being in torment, the result of steam 
escaping at high pressure : it poured out volumes of 
smoke ; and while it succeeded partially in dragging 
heavy weights, it succeeded thoroughly in disseminating 
along the track it followed all the benefits of immediate 
vicinity to the coal-pit it came from. It was, as far as 
dirt, smoke, and noise were concerned, a travelling 
coal-pit brought to the door of each house it passed. 
It blighted all the neighbouring fields with smoke : it 
alarmed horses and men by its unearthly noises and 
its unwieldy movements : it jolted and strained along 
at the rate of two and a half miles in the hour -, and in 
some cases it was regularly attended by a team of 
horses, who were to draw it home when it broke 
down, which it did daily. 

Such was the earliest type of the railway and the 
locomotive. Never was there contrast more complete 
than that between these things as they were forty years 
since, and as they are to-day. For the slow, awkward, 
dirty engine of former times, we have the elegant, 
smokeless, noiseless locomotive, so neat and orna- 
mental with its burnished brass, — with all its parts play- 
ing so smoothly and exactly, — with its pace of fifty or 
sixty miles an hour, — ready to dash out into the bleak 
waste upon the dark winter night, no man dreaming 
that it will fail to bear him safely and swiftly over it, — 
coming in to the minute assigned by Bradshaw after a 
run of four hundred miles. And as for the railwav 



George Stephenson and the Railway. 351 

itself, it has changed from the old blighted track to a trim 
road between green slopes of cutting and over graceful 
viaducts of better than classical design; its station- 
houses along the way being pretty little cottages covered 
with flowers and evergreens ; winding through parks and 
pleasure-grounds, where, if it be not too near, there is 
a positive beauty in the rapid flitting of the train of 
carriages among the clumps of wood, and the white 
vapour dying away after it is gone. And for the old 
plateway (for so it was called at first), laid down in the 
rudest way, and only on a dead level, we have now 
gigantic roads which hold right on in spite of all inter- 
vening obstacles, — piercing underneath the hills, flying 
over rivers and valleys, spanning across stormy arms of 
the sea, — the grandest triumphs of modern engineering 
skill. And while railway and locomotive have thus 
changed, an equal change has passed upon the burden 
they convey. Not that British Railways have ever quite 
forgotten their old freight — coal, once their only freight: 
but after all, the great feature in railway traffic is the 
conveyance of passengers. And among the millions 
who yearly avail themselves of the facilities afforded by 
the railway are numbered people of all sorts and 
conditions — from our good Oueen, who flits through 
her country in the state carriage of a special train, to 
the poor working man or woman who pays a penny a 
mile for a seat in the third-class carriage of a parlia- 
mentary one. As for the moral effects of the rail- 
way in abolishing local prejudices and enlightening 
men's minds, we can only say that they are wholly 
incalculable. 






2 $2, George Stephenson and the Railway. 

It was very fit that a life of George Stephenson 
should be written. It is mainly to his ingenuity and 
perseverance that Britain and the world owe the railway 
and the locomotive engine. For all practical purposes, 
he was the inventor of the locomotive ; and for many 
years he stood alone in his advocacy of its merits. He 
was regarded as a mischievous lunatic by men of 
science ; and even persons who had some con- 
fidence in him lamented that he should be guilty of the 
extravagant folly of maintaining that a locomotive 
engine might be made capable of travelling at a rate of 
ten, twelve, or sixteen miles an hour. But Stephenson 
was a sterling Englishman, and he never for a moment 
lost confidence in his great invention : he was not to be 
discouraged or put down ; and he lived to witness the 
triumph of the locomotive, and to be universally hailed 
as one of the most substantial benefactors of mankind. 
Apart from the interest which all thinking men must 
feel in tracing the career of a great public benefactor, 
there is a special interest in a life like that of Ste- 
phenson. We should like to see this biography in 
the hands of all our young men. One breathes a 
healthful, bracing atmosphere in reading this book. It 
sets before us a fine instance of success in life attained 
purely in the exercise of genuine qualities. There was 
no sham about George Stephenson. His character, 
his biographer remarks, ' exhibits a striking combi- 
nation of those sterling qualities which we are proud to 
regard as essentially English.' His ingenuity and reso- 
lution were not more remarkable than his honesty, 
his kind-heartedness, his self-denial, his industry, his 



George Stephenson and the Railway. 253 

modesty. He was a great and good man, and we can 
give his Life no higher praise than to say that it is 
worthy of its subject. Mr. Smiles is evidently so 
anxious to place the character and career of Stephenson 
justly before his readers that he quite forgets himself. 
We do not know how a biographer could do better. 
Mr. Smiles has produced a manly, unaffected book, 
which places Stephenson before us as he lived, and 
which well repays perusal. 

On the north bank of the river Tyne, eight miles 
from Newcastle, stands a colliery village named Wylam. 
Like most colliery villages, it is a dirty, uninteresting 
place. At one end of the straggling street there is a 
brick tenement, with a roof of red tiles, with un~. 
plastered walls, and a floor of clay. This humble 
edifice is divided into four labourers' dwellings. Here 
George Stephenson was born on the 9th of June, 1781. 
His father, Robert Stephenson, commonly known as 
Old Bob, was fireman of the colliery steam-engine, and 
a man of excellent character and no small intelligence. 
His mother, Mabel Stephenson, v/as a woman of deli-*, 
cate constitution and nervous temperament, but she is 
still spoken of by the workers at Wylam as c a rale 
canny body ' — a phrase which Mr. Smiles assures us is 
4 about the highest praise of a woman which North- 
umbrians can express.' The wages of a fireman when, 
in full employment did not exceed twelve shillings a 
week ; and upon this income the worthy couple had 
to maintain a family of six children, of whom George 
was the second. They had a hard struggle to find food 
and raiment, and never had the means of sending any 



254 George Stephenson and the Railway. 

of their children to school. George soon began to 
make himself useful, as a labouring man's children 
must. He carried out his father's dinner to him while 
at work, and helped to nurse his little brothers and 
sisters. One of his duties was to keep the younger 
children out of the way of the coal wagons, which 
were drawn by horses along a wooden tram-road before 
his father's door. 

When George Stephenson was eight years old the 
family removed from Wylam to Dewley Burn. A 
widow, named Grace Ainslie, then occupied the farm- 
house of Dewley. She kept a number of cows, which 
she was allowed to graze along the wagon-ways. She 
needed a boy to keep her cows out of the way of the 
wagons, and offered twopence a day as wages. George 
sought the post, and to his great joy was appointed to 
it. Here he had plenty of spare time, which he spent 
in birds'-nesting and in making steam-engines of clay, 
abundantly supplied with pipes made of hemlock stalks. 
By-and-by he got fourpence a day for hoeing turnips ; 
and afterwards he was set to drive the gin-horse at 
Black Callerton Colliery, with eightpence a day. It 
was a great step of promotion when he was taken as 
an assistant fireman to his father at the Dewley engine. 
He attained this place at the age of fourteen ; and long 
afterwards he used to tell how, when the owner of 
the colliery came round, he was wont to hide himself, 
lest he should be thought too little a boy to earn his 
daily shilling. His eldest brother, James, was also 
an assistant fireman ; the younger brothers were 
pickers at the bank-tops ; and the two girls helped their 



George Stephenson and the Railway. 2^5 

mother at home. The united earnings of the family 
amounted to thirty-five or forty shillings a week ; but 
all provisions were in those days so dear that there 
was nothing to spare for luxuries. In December 
1800 wheat cost one hundred and thirty shillings a 
quarter. 

The Stephenson family moved from colliery to colliery 
as the coal became exhausted, remaining always within 
a few miles of Newcastle. George was uniformly 
distinguished for steadiness, sobriety, and hard work. 
His physical strength was extraordinary, and he de- 
lighted in athletic feats. He took great pains to under- 
stand the nature of the steam-engine : and to such 
good purpose that at seventeen he became engineman 
at Walbottle, his father working under him as fireman. 
At all leisure times he was accustomed to take his 
engine to pieces to clean it, and master its various 
parts ; and he gradually came to have that enthusiastic 
attachment to it which is very generally felt by in- 
genious men whose work is to watch and tend ma- 
chinery. He had now twelve shillings a week, and he 
regarded himself as c a man made for life.' Always 
anxious to improve, at the age of eighteen, when he 
had to attend his engine twelve hours a day, he went 
to school and learned' to read. For threepence a week 
he received lessons in reading and spelling three nights 
a week. He also learned to write, and at nineteen 
could sign his name. But he especially excelled in 
arithmetic ; and he spent all his spare minutes by the 
engine-fire in working out upon a slate the problems 
which his master set him. He was very fond of 



256 George Stephenson and the Railway. 

animals. Fie drove a small trade in rabbits of his own 
breeding ; he had robin-redbreasts which hopped about 
his engine ; and the sagacity of his dog, who daily 
brought him his dinner, was the talk of the entire 
neighbourhood. 

In 1 80 1 he was advanced to the responsible position 
of brakesman at Black Callerton Colliery. He was 
now at the age of twenty, a big, raw-boned, healthy 
lad ; sober, steady, and expert as a workman ; but no 
precocious genius. His wages were nearly a pound 
a week ; but, always thrifty and saving, he tried to 
increase his earnings by working at leisure hours. He 
began to mend shoes for his fellow-workmen, and 
became fairly proficient in the art. He was the more 
anxious to earn and save, because he had become 
attached to a respectable, amiable, and sensible girl, 
named Fanny Henderson, a servant at a neighbouring 
farmhouse ; and he sought the means of marrying her. 
Mr. Smiles tells us that — 

Amongst his various mendings of old shoes at Callerton, George 
Stephenson was on one occasion favoured with the shoes of his 
sweetheart, Fanny Henderson, to sole. One can imagine the 
pleasure with which he would linger over such a piece of work, 
and the pride with which he would execute it. A friend of his, 
still living, relates that after finishing the shoes, he carried them 
about with him in his pocket on the Sunday afternoon, and that from 
time to time he would whip them out and hold them up to sight 
— the tiny little shoes that they were — exhibiting them with ex- 
ultation to his friend, and exclaiming, ' What a capital job he 
had made of them !' Other lovers have carried about with 
them a lock of their fair one's hair, a glove, or a handkerchief, 
but none could have been prouder of their cherished love-token 
than was George Stephenson of his Fanny's shoes, which he 



George Stephenson and the Railway. 257 

had just soled, and of which he had made such a ' capital 
job. 1 

By shoe-mending and self-denial at Callerton, Stephen- 
son succeeded in saving his first guinea. He was very- 
proud of it, and said that c he was now a rich man.' 
He maintained his character for steadiness and sobriety ; 
his surviving fellow-workmen testify that Stephenson 
never in his life was seen c the worse for drink.' On 
the fortnightly holidays, while the other workmen were 
cock-fighting and drinking, he was musing over his 
engine, taking it to pieces, cleaning it, and always 
leaving it in thorough working order. His relaxation 
was a ramble through the fields seeking birds' nests. 
But though quiet and unobtrusive, he was not a muff; 
and the story is still told in the neighbourhood of a 
desperate fight between Stephenson and a certain bully, 
the terror of the neighbourhood, named c Ned Nelson, 
the Fighting Pitman of Black Callerton.' The 'Fight- 
ing Pitman' mistook Stephenson's quietness for want 
of spirit, and, without provocation, threatened to kick 
him. But Stephenson, although no pugilist, held his 
own by determination and pluck, and gave the bully 
such a drubbing as had a most wholesome effect on 
his general demeanour. 

With a little money, scraped together by industry 
and self-denial, Stephenson furnished in a very humble 
style a cottage at Willington Quay, on the Tyne, six 
miles below Newcastle. When everything had been 
prepared, he brought his young wife, Fanny Henderson, 
there. They were married in Newburn Church, on 
the 28th of November, 1802. After the ceremony 

s 



2g8 George Stephenson and the Railway. 

George and his wife rode to their home on a stout 
farm-horse, a distance of fifteen miles. 

Thus married and settled, Stephenson remained 
steady and industrious as before. He was attentive to 
his engine through the day ; and he sat in the evenings 
beside his wife in his little cottage, busv in making 
mechanical experiments, and in modelling machines. 
He spent much time in a fruitless endeavour after the 
perpetual motion. Learning by experience, he ad- 
vanced from mending shoes to making them ; and he 
grew skilful at making shoe-lasts. An event which 
happened about this time turned his industry to a more 
profitable channel. One day, in his absence, his 
cottage chimney took fire. The neighbours, in their 
zeal to extinguish the flames, poured buckets of water 
down the chimney. The flames were extinguished, 
but the house was soaked, and an eight-day clock, a 
highly-prized possession, was spoiled with steam and 
dust. The neighbours advised sending it to the clock- 
maker ; but poor Stephenson grudged the expense. 
He tried to clean it himself, and succeeded to admi- 
ration. And from that time he drove a profitable trade 
as a clock-doctor. 

While at Willington Quay, on the 1 6th of December, 
1803, was boru George Stephenson's only son, Robert. 
The kind-heartedness of the father, formerly expended 
on dogs and rabbits, now found a better object. In 
1804 he became brakesman at Killingworth Colliery, 
seven miles north of Newcastle ; and here, after a 
short time of married life, his wife died. It was a 
sad blow to a man of his strong affections, and it 



George Stephenson and the Railway. 259 

paralysed him for the time : and we grieve to think 
that poor Fanny Henderson never knew how the names 
of her husband and her son would become known 
over the world. Soon after her death Stephenson went 
for about a year to Montrose to work at a colliery. 
He walked there and home again, with his kit upon 
his back; and he brought with him, on his return, 
twenty-eight pounds which he had saved. One night, 
on his homeward journey, footsore and weary, he be- 
sought a small farmer and his wife, at a little cottage 
on the Border, to allow him to lie down in the out- 
house on some straw. At first they refused ; but 
afterwards they received him into the cottage, treated 
him kindly, and in the morning declined to receive 
any remuneration for his lodging, but asked him to 
remember them, and if he ever came that way to be 
sure and call again. He did not return that way till 
he was a great man ; but he did not forget to c call 
again.' He found the worthy couple grown old ; 
and when he left them they had good reason to rejoice 
that they had spared George Stephenson a little clean 
straw. 

When he reached Killingworth, on his return, he 
found that by an accident his aged father had lost his 
sight, and was reduced to great distress. His sons 
who were at home were as poor as himself. George 
instantly employed the savings of his weary journey 
and hard work in paying the old man's debts, and 
establishing him and his wife (George's mother) in a 
comfortable cottage near Killingworth. Here the old 
man lived for many years, entirely supported by his son, 



26 o George Stephenson and the Railway. 

quite blind, but cheerful to the last, and delighted to 
receive a visit from his grandson Robert. 

Stephenson was taken on again as brakesman at 
Killingworth; but so disheartened was he about 1807-8 
that he thought of emigrating to Canada. Speaking to 
a friend long afterwards of his feelings at this time, he 
said, — c You know the road from my house at the 
West Moor to Killingworth. I remember when I 
went along that road I wept bitterly, for I knew not 
where my lot would be cast.' He persevered, how- 
ever, working at the colliery as before, mending clocks 
and making shoes, manufacturing shoe-lasts, and even 
cutting out the pitmen's clothes for their wives to 
make up. It is said that to this day there are clothes 
worn at Killingworth which have been made after 
■ Geordv Steevie's cut.' His reputation was greatly 
extended through bis succeeding in setting to rights a 
pumping engine which had foiled the endeavours of all 
the neighbouring workmen to get it into working 
trim. For this he received ten pounds from the pro- 
prietor > he got into extensive practice as a curer of 
all the old wheezy pumping machines of the district, 
and many odd contrivances of his excited great wonder 
at Killingworth. His cottage was full of models of all 
sorts. He taught the women to connect their cradles 
with the smoke-jack, and make them self-acting. And 
he prepared a lamp which burned under water. At 
length his character for ingenuity procured him the 
situation of engine-wright to the colliery, with a salary 
of a hundred a year and the use of a pony. He was 
very fond of riding, and this was a great privilege to 



George Stephenson and the Railway, 261 

him. From this time forward he was comparatively 
free from the necessity of manual labour. And the 
main end which he held in view in his improved cir- 
cumstances was to give his son Robert a thoroughly 
good education. Like worthy Ned Cheeryble, in 
Nicholas Nickleby, worthy George Stephenson might 
have said, — c Education is a fine thing : — / know it is 
a fine thing, — because I never had any myself.' It was 
while engine-wright at Killingworth that Stephenson be- 
gan to turn his attention to the locomotive steam-engine. 
Railways had been known in England for many 
years. As early as the beginning of the seventeenth 
century rude beams of wood had been laid down, 
along which coal-wagons ran from the pit to the 
shipping-place. Iron came gradually into use ; and 
in 1789 a considerable improvement was made by 
placing the flange, or raised rim to keep the wagon 
in the track, upon the wheel, instead of, as formerly, 
on the rail itself. In 1800 Mr. Outram introduced 
stone supports for the rails ; hence such roads were 
called Outram roads, which was afterwards abbreviated 
into tram-roads. Various kinds of propelling power 
were proposed for use on railways. Some advocated 
sails ; and James Watt had the idea of a locomotive 
engine. Several c travelling engines,' as they were 
termed, had been made by different engineers, but 
they had all proved practically useless. In 1804 
Trevethick constructed a locomotive, which was 
placed on the Merthyr Tydvil Railway, in South 
Wales ; but it was abandoned after a few experiments. 
A great difficulty was anticipated from the wheels 



2,02, Georg-e Stephenson and the Railway. 
of the locomotive turning round without biting the 

to <b 

rails with adhesion sufficient to move the machine 
forward. To avoid this, Mr. Blenkinsop proposed 
a racked rail on one side, into which a toothed 
wheel should work ; Mr. Chapman proposed that 
the locomotive should draw itself by a chain stretched 
along the railway, and passing round a barrel wheel in 
the engine ; and Mr. Brunton, in 1813, patented a 
locomotive to go upon legs. It is needless to say 
that this difficulty, which drew forth so much needless 
ingenuity, has proved quite visionary. But in the 
midst of many plans for travelling engines, the prac- 
tically useful locomotive still remained to be invented. 
In the words of Mr. Smiles — 

There was still wanting the man who should accomplish for 
the locomotive what James Watt had done for the steam-engine, 
and combine in a complete form the separate plans of others, 
embodying with them such original inventions and adaptations 
of his own, as to entitle him to the merit of inventing the work- 
ing locomotive, in the same manner as James Watt is regarded* 
as the inventor of the working condensing engine. This was 
the great work on which George Stephenson now entered, pro- 
bably without any adequate idea of the immense consequences of 
his labours to society and civilisation. 

In fact, the travelling engines which had hitherto 
been constructed were ingenious curiosities — but 
mere toys after all. They were in practice useless. 
Stephenson had heard much of them, and had seen 
one or two; and in 1813 he proposed to the lessees 
of the colliery, among whom Lord Ravensworth 
was the principal partner, to construct a locomotive 
engine. Lord Ravensworth had heard much of 



George Stephenson and the Railway. 2,63 

Stephenson's ingenious contrivances about the colliery, 
and after some consideration he agreed to advance the 
money necessary for the purpose. It was difficult to 
find skilled mechanics, and there were no tools fitted 
for an entirely new kind of work. Still the engine 
was built in the workshop at West Moor, under 
Stephenson's direction, the leading mechanic being 
the colliery blacksmith. It was placed on the Killing- 
worth Railway on the 25th of July, 18 14, and it suc- 
ceeded in drawing thirty tons at four miles an hour. 
It continued at regular work, and many improvements 
were suggested in its daily operation. It was found 
that by conducting the steam-pipe into the chimney, 
the waste steam, instead of escaping with a hissing 
screech, which terrified all who came near, would pass 
comparatively without noise, and serve an important 
end in stimulating combustion. This simple arrange- 
ment doubled the power of the engine ; and in 18 15 
Stephenson took out a patent for a locomotive engine 
which contained the germ of all that has since been 
effected. Vast improvements in details no doubt sepa- 
rate the clumsy and ugly travelling engine of 18 15, 
that champed up the rails and progressed by a suc- 
cession of jerks, from the compact and noiseless loco- 
motive of 1857, with its fluent motion and whirlwind 
speed ; but the great principle of both is the same. 
Mr. Smiles says — 

Thus, in 1815, Mr. Stephenson by dint of patient and per- 
severing labour, — by careful observation of the works of others, 
and never neglecting to avail himself of their suggestions, — had 
succeeded in manufacturing an engine which included the 



26 4 George Stephenson and the Railway. 

following important improvements on all previous attempts in the 
same direction : viz., simple and direct communication between the 
cylinder and the wheels rolling on the rails ; joint adhesion of 
all the wheels, attained by the use of horizontal connecting rods; 
and, finally, a beautiful method for exciting the combustion of 
the fuel by employing the waste steam, which had formerly been 
allowed uselessly to escape into the air. — (p. 93.) 

It was about this time that Stephenson invented the 
Geordy safety-lamp, for use in mines. In principle it 
much resembles the Davy. But Stephenson had it in 
use months before Sir Humphry Davy's invention 
was completed ; and nothing could have been more 
unjust than the accusations brought by Sir Humphry's 
friends against Stephenson of having pirated the Davy 
lamp. At a public meeting of proprietors of mines, 
held at Newcastle in January, 18 18, Stephenson was 
presented with a purse of a thousand sovereigns, in 
testimony of the sense entertained by the donors of the 
value of his safety-lamp. 

But Stephenson's mission lay in the track of the 
railway and the locomotive, and we feel that anything 
else is an interruption in the great business of his life. 
His engines did their work daily at Killingworth very 
satisfactorily, but somehow they failed to attract much 
notice. In 18 19 a coal railway from Stockton to 
Darlington was projected by Mr. Edward Pease, a 
wealthy Quaker. An Act of Parliament was obtained; 
and while Mr. Pease was looking about for suitable 
agents to carry out his plans George Stephenson called 
on him, bearing a letter of introduction from the 
manager at Killingworth. Mr. Pease was pleased 



George Stephenson and the Railway. 265 

with his visitor's appearance. ' There was,' he after- 
wards said, ' such an honest, sensible look about him, 
and he seemed so modest and unpretending.' He 
spoke in the strong Northumbrian dialect of his 
district, and described himself as c only the engine- 
wright at Killingworth ; that's what he was.' Horse- 
power was to have been used on the new railwav ; 
but Stephenson assured Mr. Pease that the engine 
which had worked for years at Killingworth was worth 
fifty horses, and entreated him to come and see it. 
Mr. Pease accordingly went, in the summer of 1822, 
accompanied by his friend, Mr. John Richardson. 
They found Stephenson's cottage ; the door was 
opened by his second wife, whom he had married in 
1 8 19. And in a few minutes Stephenson appeared in 
his working dress, just out of the pit. He speedily 
brought up his engine, and exhibited its paces, running 
it backwards and forwards with a train of loaded 
wagons. Mr. Pease was thoroughly satisfied ; and the 
result was that George Stephenson was appointed 
engineer to the Stockton and Darlington Railway, with 
a salary of ^300 a year; and in 1823 he removed 
with his family to Darlington. He laid out the entire 
line of railway himself. His assistant in the work, John 
Dixon, tells us that — 

Mr. Stephenson, in top-boots and breeches, used to start early in 
the morning, taking with him in his capacious pocket a piece of 
raw bacon and a hunch of bread, with which, about mid-day, he 
would enter a cottage or farm-house in the^ line of his survey, 
and ask leave to have his bit of bacon fried. Generally he was 
enabled to obtain the addition of some eggs and a drink of milk, 






266 George Stephenson and the Railway. 

by the help of which, and a hearty appetite, he contrived to make 
a good dinner. The farming people along the line of the pro- 
posed railway soon got to know him, and they used to give him 
a hearty welcome when he appeared at their door, for he was 
always full of cheery, gay, and homely conversation ; and when 
there were children about the house he had plenty of surplus 
fun for them, as well as for their seniors. — (p. 193.) 

Hitherto rails had been made of cast-iron ; but, 
although Stephenson was interested in a patent for 
these, he strongly urged the directors to use rails of 
malleable iron. The cost was more than double, and 
the directors arranged that at first only half the rails 
should be malleable. The important question of 
gauge was settled very simply. The ordinary gauge of 
the vehicles of the country was four feet eight and a 
half inches ; and this was adopted as of course. Three 
locomotives were ordered from a factory at Newcastle 
in which Stephenson had invested his present of a 
thousand pounds. The railway works approached 
completion ; and one day Stephenson, accompanied by 
John Dixon and his son Robert (who was about to 
proceed to Columbia, to superintend a large mining 
work), inspected a part of the line, and afterwards 
dined together at one of the inns at Stockton. After 
dinner Stephenson ventured on the unprecedented 
extravagance of ordering a bottle of wine 3 to drink 
success to the railway : — 

' Now, lads,' said he to the two young men, ' I will tell you 
that I think you will live to see the day, though I may not live 
so long, when railways will come to supersede almost all other 
methods of conveyance in this country ; — when mail-coaches will 
go by railway, and railroads will become the Great Highway for 



George Stephenson and the Railway. 267 

the king and all his subjects. The time is coming when it will 
be cheaper for a working man to travel on a railway than to walk 
on foot. I know there are great and almost insurmountable dif- 
ficulties that will have to be encountered : but what I have said 
will come to pass as sure as we live.' 

The railway was opened on the 27th September, 
1825. A great crowd had assembled to see the blowing 
up of the boasted travelling engine. A single engine 
drew a train of thirty-eight carriages, loaded with six 
hundred passengers and many tons of merchandise, at 
a rate varying from four to twelve miles an hour. The 
railway was completely successful. The traffic antici- 
pated had been entirely in coal ; but, by way of a trial, 
an old stage-coach was bought, placed on a wooden 
frame, and named the 'Experiment.' It was drawn 
by one horse, at the rate of ten miles an hour : for it 
was not till the Liverpool and Manchester Railway had 
been opened that regular trains of passenger carriages 
were run, drawn by the locomotive. But the old 
c Experiment ' was daily overcrowded, and the railway 
became a favourite route for passengers. 

But the question of railways and locomotives was 
soon to be set at rest for ever. The merchants of 
Liverpool and Manchester, who had long suffered 
much inconvenience from the insufficiency of the canal 
communication between these two great towns, had 
for years talked of a railway. The authorities of the 
Bridgewater Canal violently opposed the scheme ; but 
a company was formed in the year 1824. The pro- 
spectus issued was a careful and temperate document. 
The chief advantage it proposed was the conveyance 



268 George Stephenson and the Railway. 

of goods in five or six hours, instead of six-and-thirty, 
as by the canal. All the shares were speedily taken 
up. Several deputations were sent to inspect Stephen- 
son's engines at Killingworth, and a survey of the 
country through which the line would pass was pro- 
ceeded with. This survey was violently opposed by 
the landowners, Lord Derby and Lord Sefton being 
especially antagonistic. On the Bridgewater property 
Mr. Stephenson, who had been engaged to survey the 
line, was threatened with a ducking ; and much of the 
survey had to be made either by force or by stealth. 
All possible means were emploved to stir up popular pre- 
judice against the railway. Pamphlets and newspapers 
were liberally used. Terrible stories were circulated 
as to the results which would follow the passage of the 
locomotives : — 

It was declared that the formation of the railway would prevent 
cows grazing and hens laying. The poisoned air from the loco- 
motives would kill birds as they flew over them, and render the 
preservation of pheasants and foxes no longer possible. House- 
holders adjoining the projected line were told that their houses 
would be burnt up by the fire thrown by the engine-chimneys, 
while the air around would be polluted by clouds of smoke. 
There would no longer be any use for horses, and if railways 
extended the species would become extinguished, and oats and 
hay unsaleable commodities. Travelling by road would be ren- 
dered highly dangerous, and country inns would be ruined. 
Boilers would burst and blow passengers to atoms. But then 
there w r as always this consolation to wind up with — that the 
weight of the locomotive would completely prevent it moving, and 
that railways, even if made, could never be worked by steam- 
power. — (pp. 219, 220.) 

And even Mr. Nicholas Wood, a warm supporter 



George Stephenson and the Railway. %6g 

of the locomotive, in 1825 protested as follows against 
the extravagant ideas of Stephenson : — 

It is far from my wish to promulgate to the world that the 
ridiculous expectations, or rather professions, of the enthusiast 
speculator will be realised, and that we shall see engines tra- 
velling at the rate of twelve, sixteen, eighteen miles an hour. 
Nothing could do more harm toward their general adoption and 
improvement than the promulgation of such nonsense. 

Indeed, it is evident that at this period even the 
friends of Mr. Stephenson were of opinion that his 
statements as to the powers of the locomotive were 
likely to have a damaging effect upon the cause of 
railways. Mr. William Brougham, who conducted 
the case of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway 
before the Parliamentary Committee, told Stephenson 
frankly that ' if he did not moderate his views, and 
bring his engine within a reasonable speed, he would 
inevitably damn the whole thing, and be himself re- 
garded as a maniac fit for Bedlam.' 

The case came before Parliament in due course, and 
Stephenson was the principal witness called to prove 
the practicability of the railway. He appeared in the 
witness-box on the 25th April, 1825 ; and he was 
subjected to an amount of badgering and bullying on 
the part of the opposing counsel which at the present 
day seems almost incredible. The late Baron Alder- 
son, who was the chief of these, ought never to have 
looked at a railway till the end of his life without a 
blush. Stephenson found it very difficult to explain to 
the Committee matters which in his own mind were 
very clear, and ' in his strong Northumbrian accent he 



2/0 George Stephenson and the Railway. 

struggled for utterance in the face of the sneers, inter- 
ruptions, and ridicule of the opponents of the measure ; 
and even of the Committee, some of whom shook their 
heads and whispered doubts of his sanity when he 
energetically avowed that he could make the loco- 
motive go at twelve miles an hour/ A member of 
Committee, eager to put a question, said with dignity, 
c Suppose, now, one of these engines to be going along 
a railroad at nine or ten miles an hour, and that a cow 
were to stray upon the line and get in the way of the 
engine ; would not that, think you, be a very awkward 
circumstance ? ' c Yes,' replied Stephenson, with a 
twinkle in his eye, c very awkward, indeed, for the coo!'' 
The clever member shut up, and was seen no more. 
A great point was made of the impracticability of carry- 
ing the Railway over Chat Moss. Mr. Francis Giles, 
an engineer, declared that ' no man in his senses would 
go through Chat Moss if he wanted to make a railway 
from Liverpool to Manchester.' But scandalous as 
were the assaults made on Stephenson in cross-exami- 
nation, they were nothing compared to those made in 
the flippant and silly speeches in which Messrs. Har- 
rison and Alderson summed up the case against the 
Bill. No severer punishment could possibly be in- 
flicted at the present time upon the authors of these 
speeches than simply to read them, without note or 
comment, to any company of educated Englishmen. 
The actual fact is the best reply to Mr. Harrison's 
declaration, ' I will show that a locomotive engine 
cannot go six miles an hour, and that for all practical 
purposes I can keep up with him by the canal. Any 



George Stephenson and the Railway. 271 

gale of wind that would affect the traffic on the Mersey 
would render it impossible to set off a locomotive engine.' 
And the fame and fortune amid which George Stephen- 
son died may be set off against Mr. Alderson's declara- 
tion, — c My learned friends wished me to put in the 
plan ; but I would rather have the exhibition of Mr. 
Stephenson in that box. I say he never had a plan — / 
believe he never had one — / do not believe he is capable of 
making one.'' 

The Bill was thrown out by a majority of one, and 
an application in the following session proved suc- 
cessful. The Bill passed, notwithstanding a speech 
from Sir Isaac Coffin against it. ' What,' exclaimed 
the intelligent member — 

What is to be done with those who may still wish to travel in 
their own or hired carriages, after the fashion of their forefathers ? 
What is to become of coachmakers and harnessmakers, coach- 
masters and coachmen, innkeepers, horse-breeders, and horse- 
dealers ? Iron will be raised in price a hundred per cent. 5 or, 
more probably, exhausted altogether. It will be the greatest 
nuisance, the most complete disturbance of quiet and comfort in 
all parts of the kingdom that the ingenuity of man could invent. 

The Act cost the Company £27,000 ; and in 1826 
Stephenson was appointed principal engineer, with a 
salary of £1,000 a year. 

No sooner was he appointed than he made arrange- 
ments- to commence the works. He began with Chat 
Moss in June, 1826. The task of making a railway 
through this great morass appeared almost an impos- 
sible one. The line ran through it for four miles. 
Thousands and thousands of cubic yards of earth were 



2 J 2, George Stephenson and the Railway. 

thrown into the moss to make an embankment for the 
railway, but the enormous mass of material disappeared 
as it was cast in. The work went on for weeks 
without apparent progress. The directors feared the 
plan must be abandoned ; but Stephenson held by his 
great rule — to persevere. With great ingenuity, he 
devised means for making the railway float upon the 
bog ; and at last, at an expense of ^28,000, the four 
miles were constructed, and they have proved the best 
part of the line. Stephenson had not, as modern rail- 
way engineers have, all the organisation needful for 
making a railway ready to his hand ; in those days 
contractors, navvies, barrows, temporary rails were not. 
He sent for his son Robert from America, and hence- 
forward the distinguished father was always aided and 
advised by the not less eminent son. Reports were 
industriously spread that the railway works could not 
go on ; hundreds of men and horses had sunk in Chat 
Moss ; the bridges were falling and the embankments 
crumbling down. The railway works were regarded 
as being on a vast scale then, though they would not 
be regarded as very remarkable now. A tunnel under 
part of Liverpool, and a deep cutting through solid 
rock near that town, were among the most important. 
The line at length approached completion. 

It still remained to be decided what propelling power 
should be employed upon the new railway. The di- 
rectors consulted all the most eminent engineers of the 
day, who, without exception, reported against the loco- 
motive. It was thought that horse power would prove 
insufficient, and stationary engines were recommended 



George Stephenson and the Railway. 273 

to be placed at intervals along the line, and to draw 
the trains by ropes. Stephenson stood in a minority 
of one, and the Telfords, Rennies, and Rastricks of 
the day put aside with contempt the opinions of the 
Killingworth engine-wright. At length, by pure im- 
portunity, Stephenson prevailed on the directors, before 
incurring the great expense of stationary engines, to 
give the locomotive a trial. They accordingly deter- 
mined to offer a prize of ^500 for the best engine 
which should on a certain day be produced on the 
railway. It was stipulated that the engine should 
produce no smoke, and should attain a speed of ten 
miles an hour. Stephenson instantly set to the con- 
struction of his trial engine, the famous ' Rocket.' 
He introduced into it all recent improvements, and 
especially the tubular boiler. In every essential par- 
ticular the Rocket is the type of the locomotive of 
1857, though lt was a small, light, and rather awkward- 
looking machine. The trial took place at Rainhill on 
the 6th of October, 1829. Four engines were entered 
for competition, but the Rocket alone fulfilled the con- 
ditions which had been laid down. 

» 

The engine was taken to the extremity of the stage, the fire- 
box was filled with coke, the fire lighted, and the steam raised 
until it lifted the safety-valve, loaded to a pressure of fifty pounds 
to the square inch. This proceeding occupied fifty-seven minutes. 
The engine then started on its journey, dragging after it about 
thirteen tons weight in wagons, and made the first ten trips 
backwards and forwards along the two miles of road, running 
the thirty-five miles, including stoppages, in an hour and forty- 
eight minutes. The second ten trips were in like manner per- 
formed in two hours and three minutes. The maximum velocity 

T 



274 George Stephenson and the Railway. 

attained by the Rocket during the trial trip was twenty-nine 
miles an hour, or about three times the speed that one of the 
judges of the competition had declared to be the limit of possi- 
bility. The average speed at which the whole of the journeys 
were performed was fifteen miles an hour, or five miles beyond 
the rate specified in the conditions published by the company. 
The entire performance excited the greatest astonishment among 
the assembled spectators ; the directors felt confident that the 
enterprise was now on the eve of success $ and George Stephen- 
son rejoiced to think that, in spite of all false prophets and fickle 
counsellors, his locomotive system was now safe. When the 
Rocket, having performed all the conditions of the contest, ar- 
rived at the platform at the close of its day's successful run, Mr. 
Isaac Cropper, one of the directors favourable to the fixed engine 
system, lifted up his hands, and exclaimed, ' Now is George 
Stephenson at last delivered.' 

The prize of ^500 was awarded to Stephenson's 
engine. It had done what no travelling engine had ever 
done before. It had decided for ever the question of 
stationary or locomotive engines. One would have 
thought that a thing of such historical interest would 
have been carefully preserved by the authorities of the 
Liverpool and Manchester Railway. But they were 
practical men, and free from sentimentalism. More 
powerful engines came into use, and the poor Rocket 
met the fate of many a high-mettled racer. It was 
sold to a coal-work in 1837, and gradually it became 
unequal even to hauling the wagons. At last it was 
purchased by Mr. Stephenson, and it is now preserved 
in the works at Newcastle. The little factory started 
by George Stephenson about 1823 ^ as g rown mto a 
gigantic establishment, which for years supplied loco- 
motives to all the world. But there is nothing about 



George Stephenson and the Railway, 275 

it that possesses half the interest of the old engine 
which, in 1829, confuted all the scientific men of 
Britain, and ushered in a revolution incomparably more 
important than any change in a royal house. 

A single line of rails was completed between Liver- 
pool and Manchester on the 1st of January, 1830. 
The works were retarded by a very rainy season ; but 
the Liverpool and Manchester Railway was publicly 
opened on the 15th September, 1830. Eight locomo- 
tive engines had by this time been constructed at 
Stephenson's factory, and placed upon the line. The 
completion of the railway was justly regarded as a 
great national event ; and the Duke of Wellington, 
then Prime Minister ; Mr. Peel, Home Secretary ; 
Mr. Huskisson, member for Liverpool, and an earnest 
supporter of the railway from its first projection ; with 
a host of distinguished persons, were present on the 
occasion. The ( Northumbrian ' engine led the pro- 
cession ; and other engines followed with trains, which 
conveyed six hundred persons. The trains started 
from Liverpool, and pursued their way towards Man- 
chester amid the cheers of many thousands of specta- 
tors. At Parkside, seventeen miles from Liverpool, 
the engines stopped to take in water. The Northum- 
brian engine, with the carriage containing the Duke of 
Wellington, was drawn up on one line, that the other 
trains might pass in review before him on the other. 
Mr. Huskisson, who had alighted from his carriage, 
was standing on the opposite line of rails, when the 
Duke recognised him, and held out his hand. The 
Rocket was now seen rapidly approaching j and there 



2/6 George Stephenson and the Railway. 

was a cry from the by-standers of c Get in, get in ! ' 
Mr. Huskisson became confused, and remained in the 
track of the approaching engine. He was struck 
down, and one of his legs was crushed by the wheel. 
His words on being raised were, c I have met my 
death ; ' and he died that evening. A gloom was cast 
upon the day by this deplorable accident. But the 
railway had been opened, and the triumph of the 
locomotive was complete. A great passenger traffic 
immediately sprang up. The coaches previously 
running had conveyed from four to five hundred 
persons daily, and the promoters of the railway had 
calculated on obtaining about half that number ; but 
the railway was scarcely opened before the passengers 
averaged twelve hundred a day. The usual speed of 
the passenger trains was twenty-five miles an hour. It 
excited great wonder in the mind of two Edinburgh 
engineers sent to report on the railway that even at 
this unprecedented speed they c could observe the pas- 
sengers, among whom were a good many ladies, talking 
to gentlemen with the utmost sang froid. 9 The clear 
profit of the company amounted to ^80,000 per an- 
num. The land along the line, which was to have 
been utterly ruined, rose greatly in value ; and when 
the company needed more of it they had to pay at a 
higher rate than formerly, on the ground that the prox- 
imity of the railway had improved it so much. Every 
day's experience suggested alterations upon the loco- 
motives, and each new engine placed upon the line 
was an improvement upon those which had gone 
before it. 



George Stephe?ison and the Hallway. 2,JJ 

Now that it had been proved that railways could be 
made, that locomotives could draw trains, and that the 
result of the whole might be a good return to the 
shareholders, it was merely a question of time how far 
the railway system should be extended. It might have 
been well had the Government planned a national 
scheme of railways, instead of leaving them to be made 
by joint-stock associations of private individuals. As 
it was, lines were speedily mapped out between the 
great cities of the kingdom, and railway engineers 
sprang up in abundance. In conjunction with his son 
Robert, George Stephenson was appointed engineer of 
most of the great lines projected. Among these were 
the Manchester and Leeds, the Grand Junction, and 
the London and Birmingham. The chief labour of 
laying out and executing the last-named line fell to the 
share of Robert Stephenson ; and how he carried on 
the vast work is well known to all readers of Sir 
Francis Head's lively Stokers and Pokers. 

The battle of the railway and locomotive was 
fought in the Liverpool and Manchester case ; and, 
except where some extraordinary natural difficulty 
had to be overcome, as in the case of the Menai 
Bridge, the history of subsequent roads is a common- 
place affair. Stephenson soon found that the world 
had come over to his way of thinking ; and not many 
years passed before the opponents, not the advocates, 
of railways came to be regarded as the fit inhabitants 
of c Bedlam.' Colonel Sibthorp, indeed, to the last, 
was staunch against 'those infernal railroads; ' declaring 
that c he would rather meet a highwayman or see a 



2/8 George Stephenson and the Railway. 

burglar on his premises than an engineer ; he should 
be much more safe j and of the two classes he regarded 
the former as the more respectable.' 

In 1840 Stephenson settled at Tapton Hall, near 
Chesterfield, and gradually withdrew from active em- 
ployment in constructing railways. His disposition 
was too active for idleness, and he entered on several 
mining speculations, with various success. It is quite 
consistent with our experience of the way of the world, 
when Mr. Smiles assures us that in Stephenson's latter 
years some of the brisk young engineers of the day 
regarded him as a man of antiquated notions in railway 
matters, and considerably behind the age. He did not 
approve the design of the atmospheric railway ; he 
opposed railways on ' the undulating principle,' with 
considerable ups and downs 3 he maintained the narrow 
gauge against the broad ; and he had no fancy for 
higher rates of speed than forty- miles an hour. It is 
worthy of notice that a little further experience has 
proved that in all these respects Stephenson's views 
were sound and just. Many a ruined shareholder 
would have cause for thankfulness if all engineers had, 
like Stephenson, eschewed dashing and brilliant works 
executed without regard to their cost, and persisted in 
regarding a line of railway as a commercial speculation 
which must be made c to pay.' 

The period of the c railway mania ' of 1845-6 is too 
near our own time to need much remark. Stephenson 
held completely apart from all the new lines which 
were so recklessly projected, and in such numbers. 



George Stephenson and the "Railway. 279 

He was frequently offered large sums merely to allow 
his name to appear in a prospectus \ but he resolutely 
refused. 

The c engine-wright at Killingworth ' was now a 
rich man and a famous man, with a statue at Liverpool, 
and courted by statesmen and peers ; but success had 
no power to spoil his simple, manly, unaffected nature. 
In his retirement at Tapton, in his last days, he was 
distinguished by the same fondness for animals of all 
kinds as when he was a herd-boy sixty years before. 
He knew every bird's nest on his grounds, and there 
was not one which missed a daily visit. Many were 
the acts of unostentatious benevolence by which he 
relieved honest want, or aided struggling merit. On 
his last public appearance, at the Leeds Mechanics' 
Institute, in December, 1847, ne to ^ t ^ le assembled 
crowd that ' he stood before them as a humble me- 
chanic. He had risen from a lower standing than the 
meanest person there, and all that he had been enabled 
to accomplish in the course of his life had been done 
through perseverance. He said this for the purpose of 
encouraging youthful mechanics to do as he had done 
— to persevere.' He became an enthusiast in horti- 
culture, and exhibited all his old ingenuity in devising 
means for bringing his fruits and flowers to greater 
perfection. The Duke of Devonshire's pines were 
better than his, and Stephenson would be beaten by no 
man, even in growing pines. He spent much time, 
in the summer of 1848, in the noxious atmosphere of 
his forcing houses, which his health, enfeebled by an 



280 George Stephenson and the Railway. 

attack of pleurisy, could not resist. An intermitting 
fever came on, and, after an illness of a few days' 
duration, he died on the 12th of August, 1848, in the 
sixty-seventh year of his age. 

He had been greatly beloved by his work-people, 
and a large body of them followed him to the grave. 
The inhabitants of Chesterfield evinced their respect 
for him by closing their shops, suspending business, 
and joining in the funeral procession. No public 
honours or rewards ever came in his way.- He was 
indeed repeatedly pressed to accept the title of knight, 
and on one occasion the Government offered him a 
piece of patronage : this was the appointment to the 
office of a letter-carrier, with fourteen shillings a week 
and sixteen miles a day. This means of extending his 
influence Mr. Stephenson refused. We have not 
space to attempt any delineation of his character ; and it 
is needless. His character is drawn in those strong 
and manly lines which no one can mistake. Every- 
thing about him was genuine : his mechanical genius, 
his indomitable resolution, his intense honesty, his kind- 
ness of heart, his industry, his frugality, his generosity, 
his sound good sense, his unaffected modesty. He 
was an honour, as well as a great benefactor, to his 
country and to mankind. We do not know that there 
ever lived an individual to whom each separate inhabi- 
tant of Great Britain owes so much of real tangible 
advantage. His life is a fine lesson to every one. 
Honesty is the best policy, after all. And we do not 
know but that the working man may apply the lines of 



George Stephenson and the Railway. 281 

Robert Nicoll to George Stephenson, the Railway- 
Engineer, with at least as much propriety as to the 
erratic genius of whom they were written : — 

Before the proudest of the earth, 
We stand, with an uplifted brow : 

Like us, Thou wast a toiling man, — 
And we are noble, now ! 



z8z 



VIII. 

OULITA THE SERF.* 

THIS volume has no preface, and no notes save 
two or three of a line's length each. Its title- 
page bears nothing beyond the words, Oul'ita the Serf; 
a Tragedy. But the advertisements which foretold its 
publication added a fact which made us open the book 
with a very different feeling from that with which we 
should have taken up an ordinary anonymous play, — a 
fact which at once excited high expectations, — and 
which, we doubt not, has already introduced Oul'ita to 
a wide circle of readers, each prepared to gauge its 
merits by a very severe test and a very high standard. 
The forthcoming volume was announced as Oul'ita 
the Serf; a Tragedy : by the Author of c Friends in 
Council.'' 

The disguise of the author of that work is becoming 
ragged. We have found, in more than one library, 
where a special glory of binding was bestowed upon 
the book and its charming sequel, that, though the 
title-page bore no name, the volumes were marked 

* Oulita the Strf. A Tragedy. London: 1858. 



Oullta the Serf. 283 

with a name which is well and honourably known. 
And indeed there are few books which are so calculated 
as Friends in Council to make the reader wish to know 
who is the author whom he has learned to revere and 
love : and surely the language has none which, in its 
gentle playfulness, its intense honesty, its comprehen- 
sive sympathy, its earnestness so tempered with the 
desire to do justice to all, affords its writer less reason 
for seeking any disguise. Yet it is not for us to add 
the author's name to a title-page which the author has 
chosen to send nameless into the world : though we 
may be permitted to say that, whoever may be the 
writer of the works to which we have been alluding, 
though we never exchanged words with him, and 
never saw him, still, in common with an increasing 
host of readers, we cannot think of him as other than 
a kind and sympathetic friend. 

Accordingly, we expected a great deal from this new 
work. We were not entirely taken by surprise, in- 
deed, when we saw it announced : for Ellesmere, in 
Friends in Council, makes several quotations from the 
works of ' a certain obscure dramatist,' which are 
likely to set the thoughtful reader inquiring. And who- 
ever shall carefully collate the advertisements of the late 
Mr. Pickering's publications will discover that the author 
of Oulita published a good many years ago an historical 
drama entitled King Henry the Second, and a tragedy 
entitled Catherine Douglas, whose heroine is the strong- 
hearted Scottish maiden who thrust her arm into the 
staple of a door from which the bolt had been removed, 
in the desperate hope of thus retarding for a moment 



284 Oul'tta the Serf. 

the entrance of the conspirators who murdered James 
the First. But these plays are comparatively unknown ; 
and probably very many readers who have been de- 
lighted by that graceful, unaffected prose, were quite 
unaware that its writer was endowed with the faculty 
of verse. We could not fail, indeed, to discern in his 
prose works the wide, genial sympathy, the deep 
thoughtfulness, the delicate sensitiveness, of the true 
poet. And his talent, we could also discover from 
these, is essentially dramatic. The characters in 
Friends in Council have each their marked individuality; 
while yet that individuality is maintained and brought 
out, not by coarse caricature, but by those delicate and 
natural touches which make us feel that we are con- 
versing with real human beings, and not with mere 
names in a book. It is an extremely easy thing to 
make us recognise a character when he reappears upon 
the stage, by making him perpetually repeat some silly 
and vulgar phrase. Smith is the man who never 
enters without roaring c It's all serene : ' Jones is the 
individual who always says ' Not to put too fine a 
point upon it.' Nor is it difficult for an author to tell 
us that his hero is a great man, a philanthropist, a 
thinker, an actor : it is quite another matter to make 
him speak and act so that we shall find that out for 
ourselves. Many characters in modern works need to 
be labelled ; — like the sign-painter's lion, which no one 
would have guessed was a lion but for the words This 
• is a lion written beneath it. 

Let us say at once that this tragedy has surpassed 
our expectation. It is a noble and beautiful work. 



Quiit a the Serf. 285 

It is strongly marked with the same characteristics 
which distinguish its author's former writings. Its 
power and excellence are mainly in thoughtfulness, 
pathos, humour. There is a certain subtlety of thought, 
— a capacity gradually to surround the' reader with an 
entire world and a complete life : we feel how heartily 
the writer has thrown himself into the state of things 
he describes, half believing the tale he tells, and using 
gently and tenderly the characters he draws. We 
have a most interesting story : we see before us beings 
of actual flesh and blood. We do not know whether 
the gentle, yet resolute Oulita, — the Princess Marie, 
that spoiled child of fortune, now all wild ferocity, and 
now all soft relenting, — the Count von Straubenheim, 
that creature of passion so deep, yet so slow, so calm 
upon the surface, yet so impetuous in its under-currents, 
— ever lived save in the fancy of the poet : but to us 
they are a reality, — far more a reality than half the men 
who have lived and died in fact, but who live on the 
page of history the mere bloodless life of a word and 
an abstraction. We find in this tragedy the sharp 
knowledge of life and human nature for which we were 
prepared : a certain tinge of sadness and resignation 
which did not surprise us : a kindly yet sorrowful 
feeling towards the very worst, which we are persuaded 
comes with the longer and fuller experience of the 
strange mixture of the loveable and the hateful which 
is woven into the constitution of the race. Here and 
there we find the calm, self-possessed order of thought 
with which we have elsewhere grown familiar gradually 
rise into eloquent energy and vigour of expression 






286 OuJita the Serf. 

which startles. But the hero is not one who raves 
and stamps. And indeed the fastidious taste of the 
writer, shrinking instinctively from the least trace of 
coarseness or extravagance, has perhaps resulted in a 
little want of the terrible passion of tragedy : for we 
can well believe that many an expression, and many a 
sentiment, which, heard just for once from eloquent 
lips, would thrill even the most refined, would be 
struck out by the remorseless pen, or at least toned 
down, when calmly, critically, and repeatedly read 
over by such an author as ours, when the fever of 
creative inspiration was past. We remark, as a cha- 
racteristic of the plot, and a circumstance vitally 
affecting the order of its interest, that the catastrophe 
is involved in the characters of the actors. It is not 
by the arbitrary appointment of the author that things 
run in the course they do. There is something of the 
old Greek sense of the inevitable. We feel from the 
beginning that the end is fixed as fate. Like Franken- 
stein, the poet has bodied out beings whom he has not 
at his command : and not without essentially changing 
their natures could he materially modify what they say 
?nd do, or materially alter the path along which they 
advance to the precipice in the distance. Given such 
beings, placed in Russian life and under Russian go- 
vernment : and not without a jarring sacrifice of truth- 
fulness could the story advance or end otherwise than 
as it does. 

The language of the tragedy is such as might have 
been expected from its author. There is not a phrase, 
not a word from first to last, to which the most fasti- 



Oulita the Serf. 287 

dious taste could take exception. So much might be 
anticipated by readers familiar with the author's prose 
style : but we felt something of curiosity as to how it 
might adapt itself to the altered conditions of verse. 
Even those readers who were not aware that the author 
of Friends in Council had ever before published poetry 
might well judge that surely these lines, so easy, so 
flowing, so little laboured, so varied in their rhythm, 
so uncramped by metrical requirements, are not the 
production of an unpractised hand. Parts of the dia- 
logue are in prose ; the larger portion is in blank 
verse ; and some graceful lyrics occur here and there. 
A peculiarity of the author's blank verse is that the 
lines frequently end in three short syllables. Our 
readers are of course aware that both in rhymed and 
blank verse double endings of lines are very common : 
in dramatic blank verse, indeed, we find line after line 
exhibiting this formation : * but we are not aware that 
any author has employed the triple ending to the same 
degree, or indeed has employed it at all except on very 
rare occasions. In the first page we find it said that 
the end of government should be, not to govern over- 
much, but 

To make men do with the least show of governing. 
Other examples are, 

In foreign Courts 'tis everything, this precedence. 
From trappings overgreat for poor humanity. 

* To be, or not to be, that is the question : 
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind, to suffer 
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, 
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, &c. 



288 Oulita the Serf. 

E'en to yourself must be unknown your benefits. 
Alone and undisturbed, upon her loveliness. 

And there is one instance of an ending in four short 
syllables : — 

In evidence against us, marking preparation. 

We have been interested by finding here and there 
throughout the tragedy several thoughts upon matters 
more or less important, with which we had become 
acquainted in the writer's former works. It is plain 
that the writer thinks the discomfort arising from 
fashions of dress a not insignificant item in the tale of 
human suffering : he would agree with Teufelsdrockh 
himself as to the undeserved neglect in which men have 
held the ' philosophy of clothes.' We find the men 
servants at a Boyard Prince's chateau busily engaged 
in trying on their new liveries, which have been pre- 
pared for a grand occasion. The Prince enters, and 
finds but little progress made. He rates his domestics 
for their slowness ; whereupon the c Small Wise Man,' 
a dwarf attached to his establishment, thus excuses his 
fellows : — 

Oh ! the happy peasants are so uncomfortable, my little 
father, in their happy new clothes, that they put off the squeez- 
ing themselves into them to the last moment. It's a- nice thing 
a new shoe, now ; and not so very unlike a marriage, my little 
mother. 

The author had thought upon this subject before : — 

My own private opinion is, that the discomfort caused by in- 
judicious dress, worn entirely in deference to the most foolish of 
mankind, would outweigh many an evil that sounds very big. 



Oullta the Serf. 289 

Tested by these perfect returns, which I imagine might be made 
by the angelic world, if they regard human affairs, perhaps our 
every-day shaving, severe shirt-collars, and other ridiculous gar- 
ments, are equivalent to a great European war once in seven 
years ; and we should find that women's stays did as much harm, 
i. e. caused as much suffering, as an occasional pestilence, — say, 
for instance, the cholera,* 

In graver mood, we find something of the philosophy 
of worldly progress and quietude, in words which sug- 
gest (how truly) that the man who would get on in life 
had better not think to carve out a way for himself, but 
should rather keep to the track which many other feet 
have beaten into smoothness and firmness. The hero 
of the tragedy says, — 

To preserve one's quietude, 
It needs that one should travel in the ruts 
That form the ordinary road, for else 
The wheels stick fast. 

The analogy is so apt and true- that it had previously 
suggested itself: — 

Get, if you can, into one or other of the main grooves of 
human affairs. It is all the difference of going by railway, and 
walking over a ploughed field, whether you adopt common 
courses, or set one up for yourself. You will see very inferior 
persons highly placed in the army, in the church, in office, at 
the bar. They have somehow got upon the line, and have 
moved on well with very little original motive power of their 
own."j* 

We find that the author, very naturally, makes his 
hero express tastes which he himself feels strongly. 

* Companions of my Solitude. Chap. III. And see the same subject 
discussed in the essay on Conformity, in Chap. II. of Friends in Council. 
f Ibid. Chap. IV. 

U 



2 go Oulita the Serf. 

One of these tastes, which appears repeatedly in his 
former writings, is for woodland scenery. ' There is 
scarcely anything in nature,' he says, 'to be compared 
with a pine-wood.' Once, in approaching a certain 
continental city, the author passed through what the 
guide-books described as a most insipid country. But 
the guide-books did not know what were his personal 
likings. Leaving his carriage at the little post-house, he 
walked on, promising to be in the way when it should 
overtake him •: — 

The road led through a wood, chiefly of pines, varied, how- 
ever, occasionally by other trees. Into this wood I strayed. 
There was that almost indescribably soothing noise (the Romans 
would have used the word susurrus), the aggregate of many 
gentle movements of gentle creatures. The birds hopped but a 
few paces off as I approached them : the brilliant butterflies 
wavered hither and thither before me : there was a soft breeze 
that day, and the tops of the tall trees swayed to and fro politely 
to each other. I found many delightful resting places. It was 
not all dense wood ; but here and there were glades (such open 
spots I mean as would be cut through by the sword for an army 
to pass) ; and here and there stood a clump of trees of different 
heights and foliage, as beautifully arranged as if some triumph of 
the art of landscape had been intended, though it was only 
Nature's way of healing up the gaps in the forest. For her heal- 
ing is a new beauty.* 

Thus speaks the author in his own person : and 
his hero, passing alone through a wood, speaks aS 
follows : — 

I ever loved a wood j and here I've mused, 
Pressing with lightest footfall the crisp. leaves> 
In boyhood's days, when life seemed infinite, 



Companions of my Solitude. Chap-. VI. 



Oulita the Serf. 291 



And every fitful sound a song of joy. 
Great is the sea, but tedious ; rich the sun, 
But one gets tired of him, too ; joyous the wirid, 
But boisterous and intrusive ; — while the wood 
Divides the sun, and air, and sky ; and, like 
A perfect woman, naught too much revealed, 
Nor aught too much concealing. 

We shall be content to quote one other instance of 
parallelism, in the notice given to a matter which every 
one who lives in a wooded district must often have re- 
marked in his woodland wanderings. The hero of the 
tragedy is asked to tell of what he has been thinking as 
he has been traversing the wood which he enjoys so 
much i here is his reply : — 

Mere melancholy thoughts, fit for a servitor : 
How this tree here hemmed in its puny neighbour^ 
Drinking the air and light from it ; how that, 
The vagrant branches into shapes grotesque 
Constrained, insisted yet on being beautiful, 
And like a homely girl with one charm only-j 
Took care to make that charm discernible. 

In saying this the hero of the play is repeating what 
had before been said by its author. And it appears to 
us an indication of the life-like reality with which the 
author depicted to himself the man whom he drew as 
he paced along, looking at the grey stems and the long 
grass below, and the green leaves and blue glimpses of 
sky above-: — 

Yes, Ellesmere, my love for woods is unabated. There is so 
much largeness, life, and variety in them. Even the way in 
which the trees interfere with one another, the growth which is 
hindered, as well as that which is furthered, appears to me most 
suggestive of human life ; and I see around me things that re- 
mind me of governments, churches, sects, and colonies-. 






2,gz Oulita the Serf. 

We should not be doing justice to Oulita if we failed 
to remark, as something singular in these days, that it 
is a purely and perfectly original work. Its author has 
constructed his own plot, and imagined his own charac- 
ters. It is very well for writers who have no higher 
aim than to supply the immediate exigencies of the stage 
to quarry in the abundant mine of French invention, 
and to copy, borrow, or adapt^ as the phrase now runs. 
But we should have been greatly surprised had the 
author of Friends in Council resorted to that cheap 
method of producing a dramatic work. It cannot be 
denied that several dramatic writers of the day have 
shown considerable tact in toning French characters and 
modifying French plots, till they should hit the English 
taste, and not sound absurdly upon English ground. 
But to do that is a knacky a sort of intellectual sleight 
of hand : it argues no invention, no dramatic genius : 
it comes rather of much practical acquaintance with the 
tricks and effects of the theatre. The author of this 
play has essayed a higher flight. He has resolved to 
give the English stage a really original work : and hold<- 
ing firmly, as we know from his former writings, that 
some kind of amusement is a pure necessary of life, and 
that there is in human nature an instinctive leaning to 
the dramatic as a source of amusement, he has sought 
to show, by example, that without becoming namby- 
pamby ,-^without letting the well-intentioned degene- 
rate into the twaddling, — and without making the great 
schoolboys of mankind scent the birch-rod and the 
imposition under the disguise of cricket-bats and, straw- 
berry tarts, — it is possible to make a play such as that 



Outita the Serf. 293 

in amusing it shall also instruct, refine, and elevate. It 
is not by coarsely tacking on a moral to a tragedy 
that you will enforce any moral teaching. You must 
so wrap up the improving and instructive element in 
the interesting and attractive that the mass of readers 
or listeners shall never know when they have overstepped 
the usually well-marked limit that parts work and play. 
And we think that the author of Oulita has succeeded 
in this. A refreshing and elevating influence sinks into 
the mind, like a shower upon a newly-mown lawn, as 
we read his pages. You feel, but cannot define it. 
But many worthy people would cram improvement, a 
thick porridge, down their humbler neighbours' throats, 
—like Mrs. Squeers's treacle and sulphur. 

As the reader would expect from the title of the 
book, the scene of the tragedy is in Russia. Its time is 
the beginning of the present century. And the author 
has, in virtue of his hearty sympathy with humanity 
under all conditions, thrown himself completely into 
Russian life, and brought his readers into an entire 
world of scenes, things, and men and women. Yet, 
though the scene be in Russia, and though we know 
from his other works how much the author hates 
slavery, we find proof of the calm balance of his mind 
in the fashion in which he represents serfdom. His 
honesty will not permit him to coarsely daub his picture 
for the sake of popular effect, or to represent the 
'peculiar institution ' as more glaringly bad than he has 
ground for believing it practically is, in order to render 
it more abhorrent to our feeling. Nor do we find any 
violent exhibition of despotic sway. We do not believe 



294 Outtta the Serf. 

that the author would sympathise in the least with the 
childish cry for Imperialism which lately arose in this 
country. We trust the nation has passed through that 
crisis, like a child through the cow-pox, and that we are 
fairly done with it. Still, in the play, the Emperor of 
Russia is represented in a very favourable light, as kind- 
hearted, accessible, willing to listen to reason, and even 
to accusation of himself; and though autocratic, yet 
enchained by an overmastering and tyrannic sense of 
what is right and just, which drags him against his 
dearest wishes. We have said that there is no putting 
of serfdom in its coarser and more repellent features. 
Oulita the Serf is the pride and pet of the old Prince to 
whom she belongs, and the chosen companion and friend 
of the Princess his daughter. No cruelties are described 
as actually inflicted upon any serf in the course of the 
action of the drama : — we can imagine that the sensitive 
nature of the author would shrink from any such 
description : yet we feel keenly the hard iron links 
which are present beneath the soft velvet surface. We 
never entirely forget the difference that parts the serf, 
however indulged, from the freeman, however degraded. 
The gentle confidante is liable to be handed over, at 
the capricious word of her spoiled-child mistress, to the 
executioner's lash. And the naturally noble heart of 
the Princess is well-nigh ruined by the long possession 
of unlimited power. We are not sure but that to the 
thoughtful reader serfdom is made as incurably bad in 
this volume as it could have been in the picture of 2, 
Legree. The way to make us feel that a thing is 
hopelessly bad is to show us that it is bad at its very 



Oulita the Serf. 295. 

best. If it be a sad thing to be in bondage to a mild, 
silly old gentleman who would not hurt a fly, and to a 
warm-hearted girl who kisses more than she scolds, — 
what must it be when the whip is in the hand of a 
coarse, brutal, swearing* drunken Yankee ! 

The first scene of the tragedy shows us Baron Griib- 
ner, the Russian Minister of Police, seated at his desk 
in his bureau at St. Petersburg. He is inveighing 
against the Count Von Straubenheim, who is on terms 
of intimate friendship with the Emperor, and who has 
been instilling into the autocrat's mind certain political 
doctrines of much too advanced a character for Griib- 
ner's taste. Griibner is the type of the old Continental 
politician : the Count belongs to the school of progress ; 
and Griibner, fearing lest the Count's influence with 
the Emperor should bring to an end the reign of police 
administration, has organised a system of espionage^ in 
the hope of detecting the Count in some proceeding 
which may lead to his downfall. We feel, at once, that 
the ground is mined beneath our feet, and that we are in 
a region over which broods the unseen but all-seeing 
presence of a secret police. We never escape the feeling 
on to the end of the play. A spy enters and informs 
Griibner that the Emperor again receives the ob- 
noxious Count that evening. The vulgar spy has his 
information from a certain baroness, a spy of a higher 
class. The spy leaves, and Griibner thus goes on : — 

Far into 
The distant future this wise man looked forward, 
And saw a time, he told the Emperor, 
When half the world would not employ itself 



2g6 Oulita the Serf. 

In worrying the other half. Great sage I 

He meant that for a sneer at the Police ; 

And when good honest men would not sit down 

At meat with titled spies — that means the Baroness ; 

Or with the men who pay them — that means me. 

Another spy enters, one Ermolai, whom Griibner 
has got into the Count's employ as his Secretary, to 
maintain a constant watch over his private doings. 
Ermolai complains that his post is a sinecure. There 
is nothing to report. The Count spends all his time in 
reading. He reads theology. That^ Griibner thinks, 
is an important point. If the Count succeeds in 
indoctrinating the Emperor with his theories down goes 
Griibner, and with him (of course he is a most disin- 
terested man) Russia. The Count, Griibner says, is 
to be married : so the Emperor and he have resolved : 
then he is to go as ambassador to England, where he 
will probably make some mistake that will ruin him, or 
at least where he will be beyond the Emperor's reach. 
Griibner dismisses Ermolai", ordering him to maintain a 
most minute watch, and chuckles at his own skill in 
getting the Count to take a police tool for his secretary. 

The second scene carries us to the Count von 
Straubenheim's library. He is among his favourite 
books. He lays down his volume, and muses as 
follows : — 

One reads, and reads, and reads : one seldom gets 
Right into the heart of things — there's so much floss 
And fluff; and few can tell what they do know. 
Long histories : weary biographies : 
They only teach us what I partly guessed 
Before — that men were most times miserable, 



Oulita the Serf. 29J 

And simple thoroughly, wasting their souls 

In plaguing other men, and seldom living 

What I call life — an ugly dream it is ; 

And yet, with all my faculty for sarcasm, 

I must confess that men, the worst of men, 

This scoundrel horde of conquerors, for instance, 

Have something very loveable about them. 

The deeper that one goes, the more one's pity 

Falls like a gentle snow upon the plain 

Flooded with blood, and strewed with cruel carnage, 

Leaving the outlines beautiful, and just 

Concealing what 't were better never had 

Been done — concealing only, not erasing : 

'Tis a mixed brood. 

We speedily find that the recluse student is not so 
simple after all. He knows all about Ermolai" being 
a spy upon him. He sends for Ermolai : says he is 
about to marry the beautiful daughter of Prince 
Lanskof. Ermolai discourages the marriage, and says^ 

I've heard a saying 
Of some sagacious world-versed man,^-that marriage 
Must be pronounced a thing so hazardous, 
The odds so much against one, that it were 
As if a man should dip his hand within 
A bag of snakes, where one eel lies concealed ; 
And mostly he draws back his injured hand 
Without the innocent eel. 

The Count is anxious to repudiate any notion save 
of a prosaic marriage of convenience ; but at the same 
time he beautifully depicts what he says he never had 
felt: — 

I have a distant notion of what love 

Might be. I know the dreams about the thing. 



298 Oullta tie Serf. 

That there is one whose every look and word 
Is fascination, graceful as the clouds, 
Bright as the morn, and tender as the eve, — 
Whose lightest gesture, as she moves across 
The room, seems like a well-known melody, — 
And whom you need not talk to much, for that's 
The touchstone, — to whom you've nothing to explain, 
Because she always thinks too well of you. 

In answer to the Count's question where he shall 
find such a paragon, the secretary mentions the name 
of the singing girl at Moscow, Oulita. The Count 
remembers her well. But he speedily passes to talk 
of the embassy to England ; and then bids Ermolai 
prepare a sumptuous retinue for his visit to the chateau 
of Prince Lanskof, the father of his intended bride. 
Ermolai goes : and then we learn from a speech of 
the Count's that he is quite aware that the marriage 
and embassy are a design of Griibner's to compass his 
ruin. But he will fight Griibner with his own wea- 
pons. He will pluck from his bosom the remembrance 
of Oulita, wed the Princess, come back with credit 
from his embassy, and do good to his country. If he 
shall succeed, well. And if not, life is already as dull 
as it well can be. 

We next find ourselves in the hall of Prince Lan- 
skoPs chateau, The servants are trying on their new 
liveries : the dancing girls are practising their steps. 
The c Small Wise Man,' a dwarf belonging to the 
Prince, a jester of more than usual jest, and deeper 
than ordinary wisdom, makes his first appearance. 
All is bustle ; the Count is to arrive in three hours. 
Oulita appears along with the Princess, the latter pro- 



Oulita the Serf % 2,99 

mising her that she shall not have to join in the dances. 
The Prince drills his domestics in a manner that 
reminds us of Mr. Hardcastle in She Stoops to Conquer. 
He is a fussy, silly old gentleman, proud of his daughter, 
and picturing the grand figure she is to make at the 
English Court as the Russian ambassadress. 

Meanwhile Oulita has strayed into a wood near the 
chateau , and there the Count, who has chosen to 
dismiss his retinue and walk through the wood alone, 
hears her well-remembered voice as she sings. The 
Count accosts her with some light badinage, of which 
Oulita has the best. Then they talk more gravely. 
Mitchka, the executioner at the chateau, watches them 
from behind a tree. Qulita recognises in the Count 
the man who followed her about at Moscow. He 
tells her that he came in the Count's train. 

Then we are carried to the hall at the chateau, 
where the Small Wise Man is addressing the servants. 
He speaks from a barrel, on which he is seated : — 

The illustrious Count von Straubenheim, who, with our per- 
mission, is about to marry into our family, intends to give to 
every member of the household — something which shall be good 
for him : great guerdon, liberal largesse. For you, Melchior, 
Nicholas, and Petrovitch (pointing out three fat men), he in- 
tends to ask for a week's fast, and three weeks' out-of-door's 
work in the woods. For you, Theodore, a sound scourging at 
the hands of gentle Mitchka, that you may know how to manage 
your horses better, and what are t\t feelings of an animal when 
it is whipped. For you, Dimitri, our illustrious son,-in-law has 
thought deeply, and intends to ask the Prince to have your wife 
brought home from his other estate, because you always lived so 
happily together. 



300 Oulita the Serf. 

No wonder that the Small Wise Man held his own 
in that household. We doubt not the servants feared 
his tongue nearly as much as Mitchka's scourge. 

The Prince, Princess, and their attendants enter ; 
as do the Count, Ermolai, and their people. The 
Small Wise Man catechises the Count in a jocular 
manner as to his qualifications for marrying and be- 
coming ambassador ; and when the Count and Prince 
go together to the banquet, he muses in a very different 
strain. He is pleased with the Count's appearance : 

A noble presence and a thoughtful eye, 
But sad, 

And Oulita entering, he speaks to her wisely and 
kindly, in a fashion which reveals strongly to us the 
grand want which every thoughtful serf must never 
cease to feel. c Study to get free, girl,' he says ; c free, 
free, free, free ! ' We now overhear a conversation 
between the executioner Mitchka, and Vasili Andro- 
vitch, Prince LanskoPs steward ; from which we find 
that the steward has promised to pay Mitchka three 
thousand roubles if he can catch Oulita in any fault 
which may bring her under his lash. The steward's 
hope is that in such a case he may compel Oulita to 
become his wife, as the reward of his procuring her 
pardon. Vasili is quite aware that Oulita hates him j 
but that does not matter, in his estimation. In the 
crowd of dancers in the hall the Count again meets 
Oulita : a confidence has grown up fast between them, 
and she tells her longing to be free. The Count 
declares that she shall be, and gives Oulita his ring as 



On lit a the Serf. 301 

a pledge. He has mingled unnoted with the throng in 
the hall, and Oulita is still unaware who he is. But 
she tells us she feels entranced and bewildered. 

Meanwhile the Count seeks Ermolai, and has an 
explanation with him. Ermolai is startled to find that 
the Count has been quite aware that he was a spy of 
Griibner's, and is penetrated with remorse at the 
thought that, while aware of all this, the Count saved 
him from drowning in the Neva. He always loved 
the Count ; and from this time forward he is his faithful 
ally and friend. The Count tells him he loves Oulita, 
and is determined to make her free. He has thought 
of several plans. An adroit serf, Stepan, disguised as 
a merchant, will come to buy her. That scheme 
failing, the Count's servants are to create some great 
alarm, and bear her off in the tumult. Meanwhile 
there is to be a great hunt of several days' duration.. 
Ermolai is to remain behind : to send for Stepan, for 
money, for horses of the Ukraine breed : to watch 
Mitchka : to grow familiar with every corner of the 
huge chateau. And then the Count, left alone, solilo- 
quises. He is determined to go through with his de- 
sign, but he is not in the least blinded to the wrong he 
is doing > — 

I am a knave, a double-dealing scoundrel, 

To woo one girl the while I love another, 

For I do love her— 

What should I say of any other man ? 

But then, bur own misdeeds are quite peculiar, 

White at the edges, shading into darkness, 

Not wholly black like other men's enormities. 

Theirs are the thunder-clouds ; ours but the streaks 



302 Oullta the Serf. 

Across the setting sun. No, no ! I'm not 

A fool like that. I know full well 'tis base, 

Supremely base ; natheless it shall be done. 

If there were time, some other course we might 

Devise ; but that's what scoundrels always say — 

If there were time, they would replace, repay, 

In virtue's silvery path they Would walk leisurely. 

I am not duped by that. Seeing it all, 

Foreseeing all the misery, the mischief, 

I'll do 't, I say, and take the guilt upon me. 

She shall be free. 

Thus ends the First Act. It has indeed wrought 
an extraordinary change on the. Count's feelings and 
position. The cool, pensive, unenergetic student of 
theological books, whose great aim was the progress of 
Russia, has had the latent fire of his nature touched at 
last. 

In the Second Act we have the working of the 
Count's scheme. The hunt is over : the Prince and 
Count have returned to the chateau. The Small 
Wise Man has preceded them : cautioned the Princess 
that a merchant has arrived to buy Oulita and her fine 
voice for the Imperial Opera : advised that Oulita 
should not sing her best in his presence. Stepan, 
a shrewd fellow, appears : tells the Prince he has 
heard of Oulita, and with many disparaging remarks, 
desires to hear her sing. The Count, consulted by 
the Prince, speaks slightingly of Oulita, and artfully 
suggests that the Prince's hunting-ground was some- 
what hemmed in by an adjoining property, which 
might be bought. Oulita sings : but she has over- 
heard the Count's remarks : she now knows who he 



Oulita the Serf. 303 

is, and she wilfully sings to the very best of her power. 
She sings two songs : we extract the former as a 
specimen of the author's lyric art. It gives us the 
story of The End of the Rebel Stenko-Razin's Love : a 
story which is exactly true. 

The barge was moored on Volga's shore, the stream 

Went murmuring sorrowfully past, 
The water-lilies played amidst the gleam 

Their golden armour, moon-lit, cast. 

Mute sat the Persian captive by her mate* 

And gazed at her lover askance ; 
A little of love and something of hate 

Were couched in that dubious glance. 

4 Base that I am,' he cried, ' dear stream, to thee^ 

Who, rebel too, with willing waves 
Hast borne my armies up to victory, 

And floated down the gold and slaves. 1 

He mused ; he turned ; and smiling on her charms^ 

He met that look of love and hate ; 
Lightly he took her in his mailed arms, 

And casting, left her to her fate. 

One lily more went shimmering 'midst the gleam 

Their golden armour, moon-lit, cast ; 
That lily slowly sank beneath the stream ; 

Volga went sadly murmuring past. 

' Murmur no more,' the chief replied, ' no more : 

What I loved best to thee I gave.' 
His fierce men shuddered, but from fear forbore 

The Persian lady's life to save. 

The songs are received with great applause, and 



304 Oulita the Serf. 

when silence follows Stepan criticises in true musical 
cant : — 

There is a something, and there is not a something. There is 
a feeling and there is not a feeling. But there are makings, 
makings, makings. The G is better than the Freduccini's G. 

And after more in the like tone, he offers the Prince 
thirty thousand roubles. But the old gentleman is so 
vain of Oulita' s triumph, that he absolutely refuses to 
part with her on any terms : and thus fails the Count's 
first idea. 

But instant action becomes necessary. The Princess 
upbraids Oulita severely for singing so well, contrary 
to her arrangement ; and goes on to speak of her 
meeting the Count in the wood. Oulita replies 
sharply : the Princess sentences her to Mitchka's 
lash in the morning. The Count upon this determines 
to rescue her that night. He is well aware of the risk 
he runs in the hands of the old Prince's vassals ; but 
will brave it all. Oulita comes to him, and begs his 
intercession for her. He replies coldly : but conveys 
in whispered interjected sentences his plan for her 
rescue. A striking scene follows, in which Vasili, 
who thinks he has Oulita in his power, tries entreaties 
and threats with equal unsuccess to gain her consent 
to he his wife. The Count and Ermolai deliberate. 
They have arranged to fire the chateau in the night, 
and carry Oulita away. Ermolai, with his tastes 
formed under Griibner, is delighted with the tact 
exhibited in the Count's plan : and when he leaves to 
arrange with the men, the Count thus speaks : — 



Oullta the Serf. 305 



We shall succeed — I will not let a doubt 

Intrude upon my mind, — we shall succeed. 

This one injustice may be remedied. 

But then the things that have been — why they come 

Upon me now I wot not : hideous deeds 

Long numbered with the past. The Earth may smile, 

And deck herself each May, vain thing ! with flowers, 

And seem forgetful of the cruelties 

Enacted on her ever-changing stage, 

Till every spot upon the storied surface 

Is rank with tragic memories : beauteous slaves, 

Like dear Oulita, forced to endure, half-crazed, 

Caresses which they loathe — and children slain 

Before their mother's eyes — and women murdered 

(Happy if murdered soon) in the dear presence 

Of those who till that moment ever looked at them 

With reverent tenderness, and now dare not look j 

Whose corded limbs, straining in agony, 

Have lost — the wretch's last resort — the power 

To give them death. * * * 

The earth may smile, I say, 
But like a new-made widow's mirth, it shocks one. 
And she, the earth, should never quit her weeds ; 
And should there come a happier race upon her, 
Ever there'll be a sighing of the wind, 
A moaning of the sea, to hint to that 
More favoured race what we poor men have suffered. 
There must have been a history, they'll say, 
To be interpreted by all these sighs 
And moans. 

It is indeed a strange inconsistency, between the 
beauty and gaiety of external nature, and the wicked- 
ness and misery of man. And it has existed ever since 
the Fall. The Vale of Siddim was ' as the garden of 
the Lord,' — fair as another Eden : the black blot there 
w*as man. And the natural beauty and the human 

x 



306 Oulita the Serf. 

wickedness had to be dashed from Creation together. 
c At that one spot, it is far towards four thousand years, 
since Nature bloomed and Man sinned, — for the last 
time.'* We remember, too, what thought it was that 
came sadly to the mind of Bishop Heber, as he breathed 
the spicy air of Ceylon. Many a sad heart must have 
felt the sunshine and the green leaves a dreary mockery 
of the gloom within. And how hard it is to feel, that 
beyond that cheerful veil, there is hidden a Being of 
infinite power and infinite justice, who looks down 
quietly on the scene, and lets the world go on ! Well, 
things will be set right some day. 

His plans being thus arranged, the Count proceeds to 
the Hall^where there is a grand banquet. The Governor 
of the province proposes the health of the Count and 
his affianced bride, in a speech which is a happy imita- 
tion, by no means caricatured, of the speeches common 
in England after public dinners. In the middle of the 
banquet, somewhat prematurely, the flames break out. 
Great confusion follows, amid which Stepan bears off 
Oulita. But he is intercepted and brought back by 
Mitchka, who, as well as Vasili, had suspected the 
Count's design. The Count kills Mitchka : then he 
and Stepan bind Vasili, whom the latter must now take 
with him, as a refractory serf. Then the Count hurries 
Oulita off", with the words which close the Second Act. 

I said you should be free, and free you are. 
Your horses wait $ the road is clear to Moscow. 
He goes with you (pointing to Stepan), and will ensure your 
safety. 

* Foster. 



Oulita the Serf, 307 

Nearer : a word ! I loathe this hateful marriage. 
'Tis forced upon me by the Czar. Escape 
I may, and then — 

No ! this is not the time — 
When you are wholly free, you can reject me. 

In the Third Act we are at Moscow. Griibner has 
guessed correctly as to the share the Count had in the 
fire at the Prince's chateau, about which the Prince 
has been constantly complaining to the police. Neither 
the Prince nor Princess has had the slightest suspicion. 
Oulita has been safely conveyed to Moscow, and is 
under the Count's care. The Count is maintaining 
appearances with the Princess ; but is afraid of Siberia, 
to which the arson and homicide at the chateau would 
certainly send him, if brought home to him ; and is per- 
plexed how to deal honourably with the Princess, whose 
nature, with its fierce mixture of good and evil, is not 
one to be trifled with. Griibner has stated his suspicions 
to the Princess, who resolves to have an explanation 
with the Count. Accordingly, we have a striking scene, 
in which the Princess tells the Count that the police are 
on Oulita's track, and threatens fearful vengeance upon 
her when taken. The Count manfully avows what he 
has done, and leaves the Princess in a whirl of rage. But 
she admires and loves the Count still; and it is on Oulita 
that she determines her vengeance shall be wreaked. 

However, she relents. A little later, while the 
Count is with Oulita, the police enter the house and 
seize her, to carry her back to Prince Lanskof. But 
their plans are disconcerted by Stepan producing a bill 
of sale, signed in due form by the Prince, which shows 



3 



o8 Oulita the Serf, 



that Oulita has "been fairly sold to Stepan. The Princess, 
at a masked ball in the Kremlin, had placed this in the 
Count's hand. The police have to give up their prey. 
And when Griibner enters after a while with a file of 
soldiers, he finds that he is duped, and that Oulita is 
beyond his reach. 

At the beginning of the Fourth Act, we find that the 
Count feels the meshes of the police closing round him. 
He is in his house at St. Petersburg, when Stepan en- 
ters to tell him that spies are now watching his house 
en every side. The Count feels that the odds against 
him are too great, and he must be beaten at last. The 
Czar, too, is becoming cold. 

We next find Oulita in a room at St. Petersburg, 
working at embroidery. She is perfectly happy ; but 
change is near. The Small Wise Man has found out 
her retreat, and comes to tell her of the Princess's wrath, 
and the storming and vapouring of her father. And 
now it breaks on poor Oulita's mind what peril the 
Count is incurring;; for her sake. She resolves to leave 
him, lest she should bring him to ruin ; and as a last 
resort, asks the Small Wise Man to give her poison 
which she might have within her reach. Then a most 
beautiful scene follows between Oulita and the Count. 
Her eyes, now awakened, see the traces of ceaseless 
anxiety and alarm on his altered face ; and he, wearied 
out, falls into deep sleep as he is telling her of his 
travels in other lands. Half- awaking, he thinks he is 
speaking to the Czar, and tells him that c if he but knew 
her, he would pardon all.' He sinks to sleep again ^ 



Oulita the Serf, 309 

and Oulita, resolute, though broken-hearted, leaves her 
farewell written, and hastens away. 

She has taken a desperate resolution. We next find 
the Princess in her chamber, brooding upon her wrongs, 
and wrought up to a tigress-fury. Even as she is 
declaring what fearful vengeance she would take of 
Oulita, Oulita enters and kneels at her feet. The scene 
which follows is one of the most striking in the play ; 
and the more so that our extracts have been only of 
detached speeches, we shall quote this dialogue entire. 

Oulita. 

Madam, an outcast girl implores the pardon 
She dares not hope for. 

Princess. 

Ha ! He has left you then : 
And you return, in those becoming robes, 
To penitence and virtue — rather late, 
Methinks. 

Speak, girl, unless you wish me to call Mitchka. 
Mitchka is dead, you think ; there lives another. 
Say, has the Count forsaken you ? 

Oulita (rising). 

The Count ! 
What Count ? 

Princess. 
Why this surpasses patience ! What Count, minx, — 
That Count who was to be my husband, wretch j 
That Count who, to his eminent dishonour, 
Stole you away — set fire to his friend's palace — 
Slew that friend's servants — decked you out, great lady, 
In this fine garb — who broke his plighted word 
For you,— the Count von Straubenheim. 



310 Qidita the Serf. 



OULITA. 

You know, then ? 

Princess. 

There is no thread of his and your intrigues 
Unknown to me. He told me of your love. 

Oulita. 

Permit me now to speak. Of a return, 

You spoke, to virtue. There is no return. 

A woman might have thought more charitably, 

Of any sister- woman, though a serf: 

Madam, there's no return, I say, to virtue, 

And none to penitence, though much to sorrow. 

I loved the Count, 'tis true, yet not to love 

I fled, but to escape a shame one maiden 

Should hardly have inflicted on another. 

I saw the Count again. I listened — who 

Would not ? — to his fond words and vows repeated 

To make this slave in other climes his wife. 

But soon the bloodhounds were upon the track. 

I heard, or seemed to hear, the avenger's baying, 

Marked the ignoble lines of care — his care 

For me — indenting that majestic brow : 

'Twas then that I divined his danger, sought 

To save his life, myself surrendering 

To all your sternest cruelty might do. 

I am too late, and am prepared to bear 

The now most thriftless, useless penalty. 

But hear: men are most wayward in their fancies 5 

He should have worshipped at your shrine, great Princess. 

Perhaps it was your very excellence 

Made him decline to such a thing as me. 

He ever spoke of you with tenderest homage. 

Princess. 
He did ? 



Oulita the Serf. 311 

OULITA. 

He did ; and one there was who sat beside him, 
Who joyed to hear your praises, for the Count 
Said ever you were most magnanimous, — - 
Great as a foe, and splendid as a friend. 

Princess. 
And nothing else, the while he played with those 
Fair tresses, said the Count, — nothing about 
My furious temper, and the difference 'twixt . 
Mine and the soft Oulita' s, — nothing, girl ? 
Sealing his pretty sayings with a kiss — 
The false, the perjured man. 

Oulita. 
Not false, nor perjured. 

Princess. 
Ah, now we stir the meek one. 

Oulita. 

What he said 
In rare disparagement of your great charms, 
Was such indeed as might make any woman 
Desire the more to win the man who said it. — ■ 
By that dread suffering image that looks down 
On us this moment, I would die to win 
His love for you ; would worm myself into 
His heart, to find an entrance there for you, 
And thus ensure his safety and your joy : 
That safety being — for I'll not deceive you, — 
The chiefest aim in life for me. Dear Princess— 

[Puts her arm round the Princess. 
You used to let me call you dear, — be true 
To your great mind. Let's set our women's wits 
To work, to make the man love you. There only 
His safety lies — and there his happiness. 
'Tis you alone are worthy of the Count. 



g!2 OuJita the Serf. 

With you to aid his plans, to fix his purposes, 
Partake success with him, console in failure, 
Cheering with your bright wit his melancholy, 
He will become the greatest man in Russia. 

Princess. 
How blind is pride ! The Count was right, Oulita, 
Were I a man I should have loved you best. 
Save him we will, but not for me, Oulita. 
I am not worthy of him, nor of you. 
Nay, let me kneel to you. Could you but know 
What savage thoughts I've had, you ne'er could love me. 
Let me but kiss — that shudder was not wickedness — 
I do not grudge his fondness for that cheek. 
I meant that I must love what he had loved, 
And I do love it [kisses her]. We'll rest together, dear, 
And early morn shall find us planning rescue. 
His peril is most urgent. I did not 
Betray him ; nay, I saved him once. Your Marie 
Was not in all things bad, — not always wicked. 
Ah, could you but have known, that fatal day 
My heedless passion threatened you with stripes — 

[Puts her hand before her eyes. 
I am ashamed to look at you, and say 

The base word stripes, — could you have known how tenderly 
I felt to you, never so much before, 
And how I roamed and roamed about in agony, 
Contriving some excuse to make you ask 
Your pardon, and none came, you must, you would 
Have pitied me. 

Down at your feet I could have humbly knelt, 
Imploring you to kneel at mine, Oulita; 
Indeed I could. But then my odious pride 
Stiffened my soul again. 

Oulita. 

But more, you say, 
. Than ever, then, you loved your own Oulita. 



Oulita the Serf. 313 



Princess. 

What is the worth of my love that could do 
So little battle with my pride ? 

Oulita. 

We poor ones, 
Who from our infancy are curbed and bent, 
And bounded in, know little of the pangs 
The great endure in mastering their pride 
Long-seated, deep-engrained. 

Princess. 

Generous Oulita, 
Always some foolish, fond excuse for me. 
I almost feel I love the Count the more 
For being wise and great enough to love thee, 
Discerning thy rare qualities beneath 
The sorry mask of serfdom — 
The world would scarce believe its mocking eyes 
If it could see two women loving madly 
One man, and yet the fonder of each other. 
Is it not so, Oulita ? 

Oulita. 

Dearest, it is. 

Princess. 

Not dearest) I must tell the Count if you 

Say that fond word to any other soul. 

[Oulita hides her head on the Princess's breast. They 

embrace — they kneel before the image in the corner of 

the room. The curtain falls. 

Thus the noble womanhood of the Princess's nature 
asserts itself: and thus the Fourth Act ends. 

At the beginning of the Fifth Act, the Count, awaking 
from a fearful dream, finds Oulita's letter, telling him 



314 Oulita the Serf. 

she has fled to save him from ruin, and begging that he 
would never let it be known that he had aided her in 
her escape. Even as he reads it, Griibner and his men 
are upon him. The Count retains his firmness, but 
tells Griibner that he is beaten. He is carried away, to 
be placed before the Czar. 

And now, in Prince LanskoPs house, Oulita meets 
the Small Wise Man, and claims his promise to provide 
her poison. Fie gives her what, rubbed upon the lips, 
will in three minutes cause death ; but he speaks as 
follows : — 

Promise me this. Before 
You use this fatal gift of mine, bring back — 
Bring clearly back — to a calm mind, the days 
When first your mother's smile was dear, when first 
She trusted to your care your little brother, 
And anxiously the little nurse xipheld 
The child, as you both strayed beside the stream — 
I've often wandered there — which marked your garden, 
To you a world or waters ; then your father, 
The ponderous man, laid his large hand upon 
Your head, saying you were his wise Oulita — 
Then think, was this the end for which they toiled, 
And if, on thinking thus, you can resolve 
In one rash moment to obliterate 

What they so prized — why then God's blessing on you. 
I can say nothing more. 

We are next carried to the palace, where we find the 
Emperor and Griibner in conversation. We find that 
the Count is already on his way into Siberian exile ; 
but the Emperor, who loves him, bitterly laments that 
there is no loophole for pardoning him. Griibner goes, 
and then a serf almost forces her way into the imperial 



Oulita the Serf. 315 

presence. It is Oulita, now resolute in despair. A 
noble scene follows. She boldly tells the Emperor that 
greater men than the Count have loved where they 
should not : she justifies the Count against the charge 
of arson and murder ; says Mitchka fell in fair fight ; 
and appealing to the Emperor closely, declares that if 
the Countess whom he loved were sentenced to be 
scourged, and he burnt down a city to save her, she 
would not think less of the Czar. The Czar thinks 
she wishes to follow the Count ; but is astonished when 
he learns that what she wishes is that he should wed 
the Princess. The Emperor grasps at the idea : says 
all might then be hushed ; but adds that neither Princess 
nor Count would consent. But the poor Princess, the 
gentle woman at last, has come with Oulita in a page's- 
dress, and when the Emperor asks her if she will marry 
the Count, reminding her at the same time of her own 
slighted affection and her father's wrongs, she replies 
humbly that she will, and not seek his love, nor ask 
him to live with her. The Emperor instantly signs a 
pardon, and tells them to hasten with it along the road 
to Siberia. Still he fears that the Count, however 
much he loves liberty, will hardly make a marriage serve 
as a means of safety. But he bids them God speed, 
and says at least they may try. 

Then we are at a village on the road to Siberia. We 
hear in the distance the c Song of the Exiles ;' and a 
train of exiles enters, among whom is the Count. Er- 
mola'i is there, kindly attending his fallen master ; and 
the Count eagerly asks him of Oulita. There enter 
Oulita, the Princess veiled, and the Small Wise Man. 



316 Oulita the Serf, 

They look anxiously among the prisoners, and at length 
recognise the Count. The Count sees Oulita. and 
bursts into a joyful speech, assuring her that the evil 
dreaded so much dwindles when it comes at last. She 
tells the Count of the conditional pardon she bears, and 
entreats him to marry the Princess. He declares that 
he is incapable of such baseness. Oulita then brings 
the Small Wise Man, hoping that his reasonings 
may move the Count : but the Count states the case 
to him ; and he declares the Count is right. The Count 
then speaks to Oulita ; says he will yet return and claim 
her : — 

If not, I have a loving memory always by me, 
Something to think of when I sit beside 
My hut, amidst the unheeded falling snow, 
Of evenings, when my sorry work is done. 
Better so sit, so thinking, than in palaces — 
A thought of inextinguishable baseness 
Fast clinging round the soul. 

Then he asks Oulita if she had often thought of 
him : — 

Once only, Edgar ; — 
But that thought lasted long. 

And still entreating him to wed the Princess, and 
so save himself for usefulness and honour, she puts the 
poison to her lips, and dies as she joins their hands. 
Poor Oulita judged that by thus unselfishly sacrificing 
herself, she would make the Count feel himself free. 

It was a useless sacrifice. He tells the Princess he 
loves her now for her true love for the dead ; but he 
has no heart to offer. No word says the Princess, 



OuTita the Serf. 317 

her haughty spirit quite cowed and broken ; Ermolai' 
receives his master's last request to bury Oulita where 
she died, and to mark her grave ; and as the sad song 
of the exiles is resumed, the Count, seemingly stunned 
beyond present sense of his utter desolation, kisses 
Oulita's face, and resumes his march towards Siberia. 
Ah, the agony and wildness of grief will be upon him 
to-morrow ! And by the fair serf's corpse, in whose sad 
lot and noblest heart we have grown to feel an interest 
so profound, there sits, with covered face, the Small 
Wise Man ; — a jester to smile at no more, but a figure 
of overwhelming pathos. 

Uhonneur oblige ! How hard some men would find 
it to understand the invisible restraints that drove the 
Count into exile, while fortune, fame, and power were 
beckoning him back if he would but come ! And how 
hard, too, to understand Oulita's noble self-devotion ; 
and the self-devotion of the Princess, scarcely less 
complete ! 

And now, as we draw our notice of the tragedy to 
a close, we turn over the pages once more : and, as at 
every opening of the volume, our eye falls upon some 
beautiful felicity of expression, some life-like incident 
that almost startles by the every-day reality it gives the 
story, some thought so deep, gentle, and kind, wherein 
the author's own mind speaks to his reader, — we feel 
how far such an abstract as our space enables us to 
give, falls short of the effect which would be produced 
by the perusal of the play itself on the heart of every 
generous man and gentle woman. We do not think 



3 1 8 Oulita the Serf. 

that our nerves are shattered into a morbid facility of 
emotion, and the hand that writes these lines is not a 
woman's ; yet we should hardly like to tell how often 
the tear has started as we read this book, — how many 
hours it kept sleep away, — or even how often and how 
long we have paused and mused with the finger in the 
half-closed volume. We do not pretend to much 
acquaintance with stage-craft ; and it is possible enough 
that the very thoughtfulness which : makes Oulita so 
fascinating to the solitary scholar, might detract from 
its power of popular effect were it represented on the 
stage. For ourselves, we do not think it would. 
There is incident rapid and stirring enough to keep 
attention ever on the stretch : and the reflections are 
such that, while arresting the thoughtful reader who 
can follow the track along which they point, they will 
touch the mind and heart of average humanity. Of 
course, if Hamlet were published at the present day, 
many critics would call it dull and heavy, and many 
theatrical managers would not risk its presentation on 
their boards. And the variety of rhythm and cadence, 
the occasional abruptness and deviation from common 
metrical rules, which render the versification of a 
vigorous drama such as some judges would call un- 
musical, seem to our mind a beauty and an excellence 
in verse which is meant to be spoken and heard, rather 
than to be read ; which represents real and passing 
life ; which is put in the mouth of many diverse cha- 
racters ; and which is to be listened to without inter- 
mission for two or three successive hours. Smoothness^ 
in Pope's use of the word, would pall and disgust by 



Oulita the Serf, 319 

so long continuance. And only great variety of met- 
rical character — even the occurrence of occasional 
discords — can furnish the similitude of life. When 
one goes to the Opera, one must be content to leave 
common sense at the door, and to take for granted 
that all that passes shall go on the basis of an extreme 
conventionality. But in the case of a tragedy, if the 
writing and the presentation be worthy, the spectator 
should forget that he is not looking at reality. The 
author of Oulita has kept this in view. Yet while 
remembering that unvaried melody of rhythm would 
result in satiety and tediousness, no one knows better 
how to add the charm of music to thoughts with which 
it accords: Very beautifully, in the lines which 
follow, have we Mr. Thackeray's ever recurring 
theory of the prevalence of the affections even in the 
trimness of modern life : — ■ 

So dear that in the memory she remains, 
Like an old love, who would, indeed, have been 
Our only love, but died ; and all the past 
Is full of her untried perfections, while 
Amidst the unknown recesses of our hearts 
Enthroned she sits, in tenderest mist of thought, 
Like the soft brilliancy of autumn haze, 
Seen at the setting of the sun : and such 
Is Venice — to pronounce her name is sweet, 
Just as I love to say the word ' Oulita.' 



S2Q 



IX. 



THE ORGAN QUESTION.* 

< T> EPUBLICANS are born, not made,' says the 
JL V. lively author of Kaloolah ; and so, we have 
long held, are those persons who may be called true- 
blue or divine-right Presbyterians. A certain prepon- 
derance of the sterner elements, a certain lack of 
capacity of emotion, and disregard of the influence of 
associations, — in brief, a certain hardness of character 
to be found chiefly in Scotland, is needed to make 
your out-and-out follower of the bold, honest, but 
narrow Covenanters. The great mass of the educated 
members of the Church of Scotland have no preten- 
sions to the name of divine-right Presbyterians : Bal- 
four of Burley would have scouted them ; their 
fundamental principle is briefly this : that Presbytery 
suits the Scotch people best ; and Prelacy the English : 
each system having just as much and just as little 
inspired authority as the other. Dr. Candlish's book 

* The Organ Question : Statements by Dr. Ritchie and Dr. Porteous for 
and against the Use of the Organ in Public Worship, in the Proceedings of the 
Presbytery of Glasgoiv, 1 807-8. With an Introductory Notice, by Robert 
S. Candlish, D.D. Edinburgh. 1850. 



The Organ Question. gzi 

reminds us that out-and-out holders of views which 
have quietly dropt into abeyance in most Scotch minds, 
are still to be found in the northern part of this island. 
In arguing with such, we feel a peculiar difficulty. We 
have no ground in common. Things which appear to 
us as self-evident axioms, they flatly deny. For in- 
stance, it appears to us just as plain as that two and 
two make four, that a church should be something 
essentially different in appearance from an ordinary 
dwelling ; that there is a peculiar sanctity about the 
house of God, making tea-parties and jocular addresses 
in it unutterably revolting ; that the worship of God 
should be made as solemn in itself as possible, and as 
likely as possible to impress the hearts of the worship- 
pers ; that if music be employed in the worship of 
God, it should be the best music to be had ; and that 
if there be a noble instrument especially adapted to 
the performance of sacred music, with something in 
its very tones that awes the heart and wakens devo- 
tional feeling, that is beyond all question the instrument 
to have in our churches. Now all this the true-blue 
Covenanter at once denies. He holds that all that is 
required of a church is protection from the weather, 
with seat-room, and, perhaps, ventilation ; he denies 
that any solemnised feeling is produced by noble archi- 
tecture, or that the Gothic vault is fitter for a church 
than for a factory ; he drinks tea, eats cookies, ap- 
plauds with hands and feet, and roars with laughter in 
church, with no sense of incongruity ; he taboos 
Christmas-day, with all its gentle and gracious re- 
membrances j he maintains that the barest of all 

Y 



323 The Organ Question, 

worship is likeliest to be true spiritual service ; he 
holds that there is something essentially evil and sinful 
in the use of an organ in church ; that the organ is c a 
portion of the trumpery which ignorance and supersti- 
tion had foisted into the house of God ; ' that to intro- 
duce one is to ' convert a church into a concert-room,' 
and c to return back to Judaism ;' and that c the use 
of instrumental music in the worship of God is neither 
lawful, nor expedient, nor edifying.'* 

We confess that we do not know how to argue with 
men who honestly hold these views. The things 
which they deny appear to us so perfectly plain already, 
that no argument can make them plainer. If any man 
say to us, ' I don't feel in the least solemnised by the 
noble cathedral and the pealing anthem,' all we can 
reply is simply, ' Then you are different from human 
beings in general ;' but it is useless to argue with him. 
If you argue a thesis at all, you can argue it only from 
things less liable to dispute than itself; and in the case 
of all these matters attached to Presbytery, though not 
forming part of its essence, this is impossible. When- 
ever we have had an argument with an old impracticable 
Presbyterian, we have left off with the feeling that 
some people are born such ; and if so, there is no use 
in talking to them. 

But all these notions to which allusion has been 
made, are attached to Presbytery by vulgar prejudice ; 
they form no part of its essence, and enlightened Pres- 
byterians now-a-days are perfectly aware of the fact. 
There is no earthly connexion in the nature of things 

* The Organ Question, pp. 10.8, 125, 128, &c. 



The Organ Question. 323 

between Presbyterian Church-government and flat- 
roofed meeting-houses, the abolition of the seasons of 
the Christian year,* a bare and bald ritual, a tuneless 
' precentor ' howling out of all time, and a congregation 
joining as musically as the frogs in Aristophanes. The 
educated classes in Scotland have for the most part 
come to see this : and in the large towns, even among 
the most rigid of Dissenters, we find church-like 
places of worship, decent singing, and the entire ser- 
vice conducted with propriety. And one of the marked 
signs of vanishing prejudice is, that a general wish is 
springing up for the introduction of that noble instru- 
ment, so adapted to church music, the organ. Things 
have even gone so far that the principal ecclesiastical 
court of a considerable Scotch dissenting denomination, 
has left it to be decided by each congregation for itself, 
whether it will have an organ or not. And several 
dissenting ministers of respectable standing and un- 
doubted Presbyterianism, are pushing the matter 
strongly. 

We should have fancied that men of sense in North 
Britain would have been pleased to find that there 
is a prospect of the organ being generally intro- 
duced : and this upon the broad ground that church 
music would thus be made more solemn, more worthy 
of God's worship, more likely to awaken devotional 
feeling. We should have fancied that there was no 

* We happened once to be in Dr. Cumming's church on an Easter- 
Sunday, and found that the prayers and sermon were as full of reference 
to the season as the service for the day in the Prayer Book j perhaps 
more so. 

y a 



524 The Organ Question. 

need for special pleading on the part of the advocates 
of the organ, and assuredly no room for lengthened 
argument on the part of its opponents. The entire 
argument, we think, may be summed up thus : What- 
ever makes church music more solemn and solemnising 
is good ; the organ does this : therefore, let us have the 
organ. If a man denies our first proposition, he is a 
person who cannot be reasoned with. If he denies the 
second, he has no musical taste. If he admits both, 
yet denies the conclusion, then he is either prejudiced 
or yielding to prejudice. And so the discussion ends. 
And though we do not by any means hold that the 
majority is necessarily right, still in this world we have, 
after all, no further appeal than to the mass of educated 
men ; and they have decided 'the organ question.' We 
believe that the Scotch Church and its offshoots are the 
only Christian sects that taboo the organ. 

We should not have been surprised to find opposition 
to the organ on the part of the unreasoning crowd, who 
regard it as a rag of Popery, and whose hatred of 
everything at any time associated with that is quite 
wonderful. But it startles us to find reasonable and 
educated Scotchmen maintaining that an organ is an 
idol, and that its use is not only inexpedient, but 
absolutely sinful and forbidden. We have read with 
considerable interest, and with great surprise, Dr. Cand- 
lish's publication on The Organ ^uestion^ elicited by 
' the alarm he feels at certain recent movements on 
behalf of instrumental music in Presbyterian worship ' 
(p. 5). His part in it is confined to an introductory 
essay, which does little justice to his acknowledged 



The Organ Question. 325 . 

high ability : and instead of arguing the matter for him- 
self, he prefers to reproduce what he regards as a 
complete discussion of the subject, in two documents, 
written nearly half a century since. The circumstances 
under which these were written are as follows : — 

In the centre of a considerable square, opening out 
of the Salt-Market of Glasgow (indissolubly associated 
with the memory of Bailie Nicol Jarvie and Rob Roy), 
there stands the elegant church of St. Andrew. It is a 
facsimile, on a reduced scale, of St. Martin's-in-the- 
flelds, at Charing Cross. Fifty years since, Dr. Ritchie, 
the incumbent of that church, in accordance with the 
wish of his entire congregation, one of the most intelli- 
gent in Scotland, introduced an organ. On Sunday, 
the 23rd of August, 1807, the sole organ which has 
been used since the Reformation in any Scotch church 
in Scotland^ was used for the first and last time. 
Extreme horror was excited among the ultra-Conserva- 
tives of the Church. Dr. Ritchie was forthwith pulled 
up by the Presbytery of Glasgow, and getting frightened 
at his own audacity, he declared at its meeting ' that he 
would not again use an organ in the public worship of 
God, without the authority of the Church.' Upon this 
the Presbytery passed a resolution to the effect ' That 
the Presbytery are of opinion that the use of the organ 



* Organs are not unfrequently found in Scotch churches out of Scotland. 
The Scotch churches maintained by the East India Company at Calcutta, 
Madras, and Bombay, are provided with organs, which are regularly used. 
The case is the same with several of the Scotch churches in the West 
Indies, and with one long established at Amsterdam. Presbyterians in 
America use organs habitually. 



326 The Organ Question. 

in the public worship of God, is contrary to the law of 
the land, and to the law and constitution of our Estab- 
lished Church, and therefore prohibit it in all the 
churches and chapels within their bounds ; and with 
respect to Dr. Ritchie's conduct in this matter, they are 
satisfied with his declaration.' Dr. Ritchie gave in a 
paper containing his reasons of dissent ; and a committee 
of the Presbytery prepared a reply to it. These two 
papers form the substance of the book now sent forth 
with Dr. Candlish's name. 

The commotion excited in Scotland by the introduc- 
tion of the organ was indescribable. Dr. Ritchie was 
accused of ' the monstrous crime of worshipping God 
by images, of violating the articles of the Union, of 
demolishing the barriers for the security of our religion, 
of committing a deed of perjury to ordination vows ' 
(p. 61). A howl of execration was directed against 
the man who had exhibited the flagrant insolence of 
introducing what John Knox is recorded, we believe 
without the least foundation, to have described as a 
c kist fu o' whistles.' Pamphlets and caricatures were 
numerous. Dr. Candlish thinks it worth while to pre- 
serve the remembrance of a picture 'which represents 
Dr. Ritchie, who was about the time of these proceed- 
ings translated to Edinburgh, travelling as a street 
musician, with a barrel organ strapped across his 
shoulder, and solacing himself with the good old tune, 
" I'll gang nae mair to yon toun " ' (p. 28). What 
entrancing fun ! 

Dr. Candlish's own sentiments are manfully ex- 
pressed. He thinks that 'cogent arguments can be 



The Organ Question. 327 

urged, both from reason and Scripture, against the 
practice of using the organ' (p. 14). He hopes that 
his present publication ' will make many who have been 
almost led away by the plausibilities that are so easily 
got up on the side of organs, pause before they lend 
themselves to what may cause a most perilous agitation' 
(p. 31). This is fair enough, because there may be 
prejudices in the mass of the Scotch people so strong 
that it would be inexpedient to shock them by intro- 
ducing instrumental music. But Dr. Candlish goes on, 
in words which bewilder us, to give his opinion on the 
essential merits of the question : — 

It is not that I am afraid of a controversy on this subject, or 
of its issue, so far as the merits of the question are concerned. I 
believe it is a question which touches some of the highest and 
deepest points of Christian theology. Is the temple destroyed : 
is the temple worship wholly superseded ? Have we, or have we 
not, priests and sacrifices among us now ? Does the Old Testa- 
ment itself point to anything but the * fruit of the lips ' as the 
peace-offering or thank-offering of gospel times ? Is there a trace 
in the New Testament of any other mode of praise ? For my part, I 
am persuaded that if the organ be admitted, there is no barrier, in 
principle, against the sacerdotal system in all its fulness, — against 
the substitution again, in our nvhole religion, of the formal for the 
spiritual, the symbolical for the real ! 

And then, remembering that this may grieve Angli- 
cans, Dr. Candlish goes on kindly to say that the 
Church of England never attained light enough to 
reject the organ, and may therefore be permitted the 
use of a carnal contrivance which the more enlight- 
ened Scotch Churchmen would be retrograding in 
taking up. A position at which the organ is retained, is 
well enough for darkened Southrons ; but would be a 



328 The Organ Question. 

wretched falling off in the followers of Cameron and 
Renwick. 

Dr. Ritchie appears from his Statement to have been 
an enlightened and educated man, a good deal in advance 
of his age, and who had miscalculated the consequences 
of setting up the organ. The pear was not ripe ; it is 
hardly so yet, after the lapse of fifty years. He adduces 
just such arguments in favour of instrumental music, as 
would present themselves to any intelligent mind, 
modified somewhat by his knowledge of the prejudices 
of the tribunal he addressed. His statement is written 
with elegance, and temperately expressed. He sets 
out by stating that the use of instrumental music in 
worship has its foundation in the best feelings of human 
nature, prompting men to employ with reverence, 
according to the means they possess, all their powers in 
expressing gratitude to their Creator. This use cannot 
be traced in sacred history from the time of Moses down 
to that of David : but David not only employed instru- 
mental music himself, but calls ' on all nations, all the 
earth, to praise the Lord as he did, with psaltery, with 
harp, with organ, with the voice of a psalm.' His 
psalms are constantly sung in Christian worship ; c and 
can it be a sin to sing them, as was done by the original 
composer, with the accompaniment of an organ ? ' 
Christ never found fault with instrumental music, 
neither did Paul or John ; the latter indeed tells us that 
he beheld in heaven 'Harpers harping with their harps.' 
During the earlier centuries, the persecutions to which 
Christians were exposed probably suffered no thought 
about a matter not essential : but the use of organs 



The Organ Question. ' $2g 

became general in the time of dawning light. At the 
Reformation it was felt that their use was no essen- 
tial part of Popery ; and thus it was retained by all 
the reformed churches, those of Luther and Calvin 
alike, except the Church of Scotland. Organs did not 
find favour in Scotland, because religious persecution 
had excited in that country a great horror of whatever 
had been used in popish or prelatical worship, as altars, 
crosses, organs. But although the organ was associated 
with Episcopacy, there is no necessary connection : — 

And in the use of an organ in church during public praise, I 
cannot, for my life, after long and serious attention to the subject, 
discover even an approach to any violation either of the purity 
or uniformity of our worship. For who will or can allege 
that an organ is an innovation upon the great object of wor- 
ship ? — we all, I trust, worship the one God, through the one 
Mediator. Or upon the subject of praise ? — for we all sing the 
same psalms and paraphrases in the same language, all giving 
thanks for the same mercies. Or upon the posture of the wor- 
shippers ? — for we all sit, as becomes Presbyterians. Or upon the 
tunes sung ? — for we sing only such as are in general use. Or 
upon the office of the precentor ? — for he still holds his rank, and 
employs the commanding tones of the organ for guiding the 
voices of the people. What, then, is it ? It is a help, a support 
given to the precentor's voice, for enabling him more steadily, 
and with more dignity, to guide the voice of the congregation, 
and thus to preserve not only uniformity, but that unity of voice 
which is so becoming in the public service, which so pleasingly 
heightens devout feelings, and prevents that discord which so 
easily distracts the attention of the worshippers. 

Such is an outline of Dr. Ritchie's argument. Our 
readers will, we doubt not, be curious to know what 
considerations, partaking of the nature of argument, can 
be adduced against the use of organs in church. Most 



3$o The Orga?i Question. 

people, we should think, would be more curious to 
know this^ than to have arguments in favour of a 
usage for which common sense is authority sufficient. 
Now, had the committee of the Glasgow Presbytery- 
assigned their true reason for rejecting the organ, it 
might have been very briefly set out : it was simply to 
be different from the Prelatists. A divine-right Presby- 
terian does not think of discussing the fitness of any 
observance on the ground of its own merits. He 
brings the matter to a shorter issue — viz., Is it used in 
the Anglican Church or is it not ? If he goes beyond 
that, his final question would be, What did John Knox 
say about it ? His infallibility is held in Scotland much 
more strongly and practically than the Pope's is in Italy. 
If any irian in a Scotch Church Court should venture 
to impugn anything that ever was said by the Reformer, 
he would draw a perfect storm of indignation upon his 
own head. We repeat, there is no doctrine more 
decidedly held in Scotland than that of the infallibility 
of John Knox. Perhaps that of the impeccability of 
Calvin should be regarded as a companion doctrine. 
His vagaries as to the Sabbath preclude his reception as 
infallible. We have seen a paper by an eminent 
minister of a Scotch dissenting ' body,' whose purpose 
was to prove that Calvin was right in burning Servetus. 
The argument, so far as we could make it out, appeared 
to be that Calvin's doing so was right, because Calvin 
did it. Of course, had Servetus burned Calvin, it would 
have been quite a different thing. 

As for the reply to Dr. Ritchie's Statement (which 
was drawn up by a certain Dr. Porteous), we shall at 



The Organ Question, 331 

once say of it that it appears to us characterised by 
ignorance, stupidity, and vulgarity, in the very highest 
degree. Dr. Ritchie's paper dealt with broad prin- 
ciples : this is mainly employed in paltry personalities 
and misrepresentations. Its style bristles with such 
descriptions of instrumental music as c will-worship,' 
' superstitious rites,' c converting a church into a concert 
room,' c an organ tickling the ear of the audience ' (the 
italics are the writer's own), c the puerile amusement of 
pipes and organs,' &c. We shall endeavour to pick 
out from this very tedious lucubration whatever it 
contains in the nature of argument ; and we believe 
that our readers will agree with us that the mere 
statement of the following objections to the organ is 
sufficient refutation of them. We give our references, 
lest we should be suspected of caricaturing Dr. 
Porteous's argument : — 

1. Instrumental music in the worship of God is as 
much part of the Jewish system as circumcision : 
therefore, if circumcision be abolished, so is the organ 
(pp. 86-7). Instrumental music was essentially con- 
nected with sacrifice ; and as sacrifice was abolished 
by Christ's death, so was instrumental music abolished 
(pp. 87-8). The New Testament, by prescribing a 
new way of worshipping God, — to wit, by singing 
psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, — is to be under- 
stood as abolishing the old way, by instrumental music 
(p. 91). St. Paul, far from commending instrumental 
music, speaks of it with contempt — If I c have not 
charity, I am become as sounding brass or a tinkling 
cymbal' (p. 96). True, harps are spoken of by 



S^Z The Organ Question. 

St. John as in heaven ; but St. John was drawing on 
his recollection of the Temple service, and is not to be 
literally understood (pp. 97-8). So much for the 
argument from Scripture. 

2. The Christians of the early centuries would have 
had organs, had it been right to have them. As they 
had them not, c it is evident that they considered it un- 
lawful to employ instrumental music in the worship of 
God. Both Arians and orthodox would have regarded 
themselves as returning back to Judaism, if they had 
permitted it in their public worship' (p. 108). We 
are surprised to find the Fathers quoted by a Presby- 
terian clergyman, but in this case they make in favour 
of his views. Justin Martyr says, c Plain singing is 
not childish, but only the singing with lifeless organs : 
whence the use of such instruments, and other things 
fit for children, is laid aside' (pp. 109-10). Basil 
speaks of organs as ' the inventions of Jubal, of the 
race of Cain' (p. 111). Chrysostom says that in- 
strumental music ' was only permitted to the Jews for 
the imbecility and grossness of their souls : but now, 
instead of organs, Christians must use the body to 
praise God' (p. 112). Jerome and Augustine speak 
in a similar strain. Thomas Aquinas, in the School- 
man age, says, ' In the old law, God was praised both 
with musical instruments and human voices. But the 
Church does not use musical instruments to praise God, 
lest she should seem to judaise' (p. 115). And we are 
told, on the authority of Eckhard, that Luther (among 
other hasty things which he said) said that c organs were 
among the ensigns of Baal /' (p. 119). There is no 



The Organ Question, 333 

doubt that Calvin declared that c Instrumental music is 
not fitter to be adopted into the public worship of the 
Christian Church than the incense, the candlesticks, 
and the other shadows of the Mosaic law' (p. 121). 
Our reply to all this is, that the Fathers, Schoolmen, 
and Reformers, might fall into error : if the question is 
to be decided by authority, we could adduce a thousand 
authorities in favour of the organ for every one against 
it ; these eminent men had no other grounds for forming 
their opinion than are patent to us, and it seems mani- 
fest to common sense that neither in reason nor Scrip- 
ture are there any grounds to support the opinions they 
express. We appeal to the common sense of mankind, 
even from the judgment of Chrysostom, Aquinas, 
Luther, and Calvin. 

3. Dr. Porteous's next argument against the organ 
is, that the Fathers of the Scotch Church ' regarded 
instrumental music as the offspring of Judaism, and 
abhorred it as a relic of Popery, and too intimately con- 
nected with that prelatic form which our forefathers 
never could endure ' (p. 132). c It has been allowed 
by authors, foreign and domestic, that the genius of the 
Scotch people is much more musical than that either of 
the English, the Dutch, or the French. But the people 
of Scotland abhor the blending of the inventions of man 
with the worship of God. They conceive instrumental 
music inconsistent with the purity of a New Testa- 
ment Church' (p. 134). Then 'Knox and Melville, 
Rutherford and Henderson, offer not one word in behalf 
of the organ. They allow it to perish unnoticed, as a 
portion of that trumpery which ignorance and superstition 



334 The Organ Question. 

had foisted into the house of God ' (p. 140). c The 
fixed, determined opposition to instrumental music ' 
among the Scotch Reformers c ariseth from legal,political, 
morale and Scriptural grounds ' (p. 140). We admit 
at once that the founders of the Scotch Church had an 
inveterate dislike for the organ ; but as they give us no 
reason for their dislike, except the tact that the organ 
had been employed in prelatic worship, and the utterly 
groundless assertion that instrumental music was a 
purely Jewish observance, we cannot regard their dis- 
like otherwise than as an irrational prejudice. The 
argument from Knox's opinion may be a very good one 
where men believe the infallibility of Knox, but with us 
it has no weight whatever. We regard ourselves quite 
as competent to form an opinion in this matter as 
Knox ; and the argument from mere authority will not 
do in a case where the authorities quoted have no 
special weight, and are in a minority of one to a 
hundred. 

4. The next argument is addressed exclusively to 
persons belonging to the Church of Scotland. - At the 
Revolution, c Prelacy was for ever abolished in Scot- 
land ;' and the organ is part of Prelacy (pp. 144-5). 
The people, at all events, regarded it as such (p. 145). 
And when it was stipulated at the union of the two 
kingdoms, that the established worship should continue, 
it was understood on all hands that this stipulation 
excluded instrumental music (pp. 150-161). Every 
clergyman at his ordination subscribes a formula, in 
which he c sincerely owns the purity of worship pre- 
sently authorised and practised in this Church, and that 



The Organ Question. 33$ 

he will constantly adhere to the same \ and that he will 
neither directly nor indirectly endeavour the prejudice 
and subversion thereof (p. 162). But this purity of 
worship is destroyed by introducing an organ ; for c by 
blending instrumental music with the human voice, the 
simple melody of our forefathers becomes immediately 
changed into a medley, composed of animate and 
inanimate objects ' (p. 165). 

We do not think any comment is needful upon all 
this. We give another passage, which we presume is 
intended for an argument : — 

Man being a reasonable creature, and a reasonable service being 
demanded from him by God, that reasonable service cannot so 
properly be performed by man as when he useth his voice alone. 
This is the vehicle which God hath given him to convey to his 
Maker the emotions of his soul. Musical instruments may 
indeed tickle the ear and please the fancy of fallen man. But 
is God to be likened to fallen man ? Organs are the mere inven- 
tion of man, played often by hirelings who, while they modulate 
certain sounds, may possess a heart cold and hard as the nether 
millstone. You may, if you please, style such music the will- 
worship of the organist ; but you surely cannot, in common 
sense, denominate it the praise of devout worshippers, singing 
with grace, and making melody to the Lord in the heart. 

The only passage in Dr. Porteous's argument which 
appears to us to partake of the nature of discussion on 
the merits of the question, is the following vulgarity : — 

Your committee have heard your amateurs and dilettanti assert 
that their nerves have been completely overcome with the power- 
ful tones of the organ, and the sublime crash of instrumental 
music in the oratorios of Handel. Your committee are willing 
to allow this musical effect; but they believe, at the same time, 
that all the musical instruments that ever were used can never 



336 The Organ Question. 

produce upon the devout and contemplative mind that sublime 
and pathetic effect which the well regulated voice of 8000 
children produced, when singing the praises of God in the cathe- 
dral of St. Paul's upon the recovery of our good old religious 
king. Away, then, with the cant of an organ's being so won- 
derfully calculated to increase the devotion of Christians ! Your 
committee have sometimes had an opportunity of listening to 
instrumental music, in what is styled cathedral worship. It 
might for a little time please and surprise by its novelty ; the 
effect, however, was very transitory, and sometimes produced 
ideas in the mind very different from devotion. Your committee 
believe that when the praises of God are sung by every individual, 
even of an unlettered country congregation, the effect is much 
more noble, and much more salutary to the mind of a Christian 
audience, than all the lofty artificial strains of an organ, extracted 
by a hired organist, and accompanied by a confused noise of many 
voices", taught at great expense to chant over what their hearts 
neither feel, nor their heads understand. 

Now, as it appears to us, this passage is the only 
one in Dr. Porteous's long treatise which touches the 
merits of 'the organ question.' Here he fairly joins 
issue with the supporters of the organ on the question 
whether the use of that instrument does or does not 
render God's praise more solemn and affecting. He 
maintains that it does not. On the strongest of all 
evidence, our own experience, we maintain that it 
does. And we have no higher court to appeal to. 
We are just brought back to the principle with which 
we set out — the existence of two sorts or species of 
human constitution essentially different by nature. 
And in differing out and out from Dr. Porteous, we 
can but comfort ourselves with the belief that were 
the educated population of Christendom polled, we 
should be in a majority of a thousand to one. We 



The Organ Question. 33 7 

make bold to say, that were you to poll the educated 
people of Scotland, we should have a hundred to one 
in our favour. 

It will amuse our readers to know that this en- 
lightened clergyman, in closing his argument, bestows 
a parting kick upon the idolatrous organ, by reminding 
us that we read in the Book of Job, that the wicked 
of those days c took the timbrel and the harp, and 
rejoiced at the sound of the organ* (Job, ch. xxi. v. 14, 
15, p. 188).. And when Nebuchadnezzar erected 
his golden image, the signal for its worship was c the 
sound of the cornet, flute, harp, sackbut, psaltery, 
dulcimer, and all kinds of music ' (Daniel, ch. iii. v. 
3, p. 189). What on earth can we say to the man 
who could seriously write this ? 

We have thus set forth Dr. Porteous's argument 
against the organ ; an argument which Dr. Candlish 
tells us < impressed him, when he first studied it, with 
the sort of sense of completeness which a satisfactory 
demonstration gives ; and a recent perusal has not 
lowered his opinion of it ' (p. 30). For ourselves, it 
has impressed us with absolute wonder to think that 
any reasonable man could have written a treatise so 
filled with bigotry and absurdity. We could not think 
of setting ourselves to answer arguments whose folly 
is apparent on the first glance at them ; indeed, our 
fear is, that our readers may fancy we have inten- 
tionally caricatured them, and we beg to tender the 
assurance that we have set them out with scrupulous 
fairness. We lament to see that minds, naturally 
powerful and candid, can be cramped and cribbed by 

z 



338 The Organ Question* 

gloomy prejudices to the extent exemplified in Drs. 
Porteous and Candlish, and we confidently make our 
appeal from them to the common sense of the people 
of Scotland. The great mass of educated Scotch 
people is fast becoming extricated from the vulgar 
prejudice against the organ. In every circle of society, 
the wish may be heard for its introduction, on the 
broad ground that it would be a great improvement ; 
and that there is no reason whatever against it, except 
the prejudice of the first Scotch reformers against 
everything which had been used in popish or prelatic 
worship. The feeling is gaining ground in Scotland 
that this spirit of mere contrariety was allowed to go 
to a most unreasonable length. The spirit of the 
Covenanters was, c Never mind if kneeling be the 
natural posture of prayer, and the one we ourselves 
always adopt in private ; the Prelatists kneel in church, 
and therefore we shall stand. Never mind if the very 
necessity of using the lungs points to standing as the 
attitude for singing God's praise ; the Prelatists stand, 
so we shall sit.' And there can be no question that 
the educated classes in Scotland, in laying aside the 
spirit of pure contrariety to Episcopacy, and looking at 
observances and estimating them by their own merits, 
are in so far departing from the true Presbyterian 
principle : if we are to understand by that the principle 
of the people who signed the Solemn League and 
Covenant, and thereby undertook to < endeavour the 
extirpation of Popery, Prelacy, superstition, heresy, 
schism, and profaneness.'* No doubt the ' Came- 

* Solemn League and Covenant, Section II. 



The Organ Question. 339 

ronians ' and c Original Seceders * of Scotland at the 
present day, are a great deal more like the Covenanters 
than is the Church of Scotland. Holding that for 
many reasons Presbytery is the best form of church- 
government for Scotland, the great majority of the 
clergy of the Scotch Church are equally persuaded 
that Episcopacy is the best form of church-government 
for England. And very many of the most influential 
among the elders of the Church of Scotland, say at 
once that they are Presbyterians in Scotland and 
Episcopalians in England. It would indeed be a 
wretched thing, if in days not over-friendly to eccle- 
siastical establishments, the Churches of England and 
Scotland, maintaining precisely the same doctrines, and 
differing solely in the non-essential of church-govern- 
ment, should ever cherish other than a spirit of mutual 
kindness and mutual support. At the same time, it 
will take another century of railway communication 
and intercourse with England to rub off the horror of 
Prelacy and all its belongings which exists among the 
humbler classes — at least in country places. A cross 
over the gable of a church, or a window of stained 
glass, must still be introduced, in country parishes, 
with great caution. We observe from a Scotch news- 
paper, that a country clergyman, within the last six 
months, introduced a choir of trained singers into his 
church, in the hope of improving the psalmody. When- 
ever the choir began the psalm, most of the congre- 
gation closed their books, and refused to join in the 
singing, and many rose and left the church. A choir 
was introduced into the parish church of a considerable 



34-Q The Organ Question. 

town in the north of Scotland. Some of the people 
listened in wonder to its first notes, and then hurried 
out to escape the profanation, exclaiming, c They'll 
be bringing o'er the Pope next ! ' If a country- 
minister wishes his precentor or clerk to appear in a 
gown and a white neckcloth, instead of entering the 
desk in a sky-blue coat and scarlet waistcoat, some of 
his parishioners are sure to trace in the arrangement an 
undue leaning towards Episcopacy. The minister of 
a remote parish was presented with a pulpit-gown by 
his people. The people naturally expected to see it 
next Sunday, and a larger congregation came to see 
the gown than would have assembled to hear the 
sermon. The minister, however, wore no gown. 
Some of the chief contributors to its expense called 
at the manse, to express the hope of the parish that 
the gown might be worn. 

to o 

c I cannot wear it,' said the minister ; c it is too 
large for me.' 

' Too large ! ' was the reply ; c it fits elegantly.' 

Upon which the enlightened and cultivated gentle- 
man answered — 

' No, it is far too large : the tail of it reaches a' 
the way to Rome ! ' 

No doubt this man would have judged an organ a 
blasphemous, Satanic, Jewish, Popish, and Prelatic 
device. But we do not believe that at the present day 
such a person could be found among the clergy of the 
farthest presbytery of the Hebrides. 

We do not think that the time has come for the 
general introduction of the organ in Scotland. There 



The Organ Question. 341 

is no use in running in the face of the prejudices of a 
great number of worthy though narrow and ill-informed 
persons ; and while the opponents of the organ regard 
the question as one of principle, its supporters can- 
not regard the organ as more than a luxury. It is 
a step in advance that there should be in Scotland 
such a thing as ' The Organ Question.' The matter 
is now in debate : at one time the Presbyterian who 
raised it would have been (morally) knocked on the 
head. With the increasing enlightenment of the age, 
and the rapid communication that now exists between 
the Northern and Southern portions of Britain, it is a 
mere matter of time till the organ shall be employed 
wherever its expense can be afforded. It would be 
highly inexpedient to press it upon the people now. 
It would retard the period of its general reception. 
All that can be looked for at present is, that permission 
should be granted to each congregation to act upon its 
own judgment in the matter of the organ. It will be 
introduced first in the churches in the fashionable parts 
of Edinburgh and Glasgow, next in country parishes 
where the squire has been educated at Oxford, and 
ultimately, we doubt not, it will excite as little wonder 
in Scotland as it does in England now. The tide 
is flowing surely. But we shall not live to see that 
time. 

Half-material beings as we are, and often the worse 
for the material things which surround us — which by 
their very solidity make spiritual things seem shadowy 
and unreal in the comparison — it is well when we can 
make (so to speak) a reprisal on the hostile territory, 



343 The Organ Question. 

and get a material thing to conduce to our spiritual 
advantage. We cannot but think that in all the reason- 
ings of ultra-Presbyterians on the immorality of organs, 
there is woven a thread of the old Gnostic heresy of 
the essential evil of matter ; as though the same God 
who made our spirits capable of being impressed, had 
not made the material sights and sounds which are 
capable of impressing them. We are not afraid to 
argue ' The Organ Question ' with Dr. Candlish on 
the highest and farthest-reaching grounds, though we 
think it quite sufficiently decided by the ready appeal 
to common sense. But what greater harm is there in 
using the organ's notes to waken pious thought and 
feeling, than in learning a lesson of our decay from the 
material emblem of the fading leaf, or from the lapse 
of the passing river ? If it be not wrong to avail our- 
selves of the natural pensiveness of the departing light, 
and to go forth like Isaac in the eventide to meditate 
upon our most solemn concerns, — why is it sinful or 
degrading to turn to use the native power which the 
Creator has set in the organ's tones to stir tender and 
holy emotion ? When we can get the Material to yield 
us any impulse upward, in God's name let us take its 
aid and be thankful ! And as Dr. Candlish likes 
authorities, we shall conclude with a better authority 
than that of Dr. Porteous. He tells us that the organ 
may c tickle the ear,' but denies its power to touch 
the heart. Milton thought otherwise : and we believe 
that his words describe the normal influence of the 
organ on the healthy human mind : — 



The Organ Question. 343 

But let my due feet never fail 

To walk the studious cloister's pale ; 

And love the high embowered roof, 

With antique pillars massy proof, 

And storied windows richly dight, 

Casting a dim religious light 5 

There let the pealing organ blow 

To the full-voiced quire below, 

In service high and anthems clear, 

As may with sweetness, through mine ear, 

Dissolve me into ecstasies, 

And bring all heaven before mine eyes. 



344 



X. 

LIFE AT THE WATER CURE.* 

ALL our readers, of course, have heard of the 
Water Cure ; and many of them, we doubt not, 
have in their own minds ranked it among those eccen- 
tric medical systems which now and then spring up, 
are much talked of for a while, and finally sink into 
oblivion. The mention of the Water Cure is sugges- 
tive of galvanism, homoeopathy, mesmerism, the grape 
cure, the bread cure, the mud-bath cure, and of the 
views of that gentleman who maintained that almost all 
the evils, physical and moral, which assail the constitu- 
tion of man, are the result of the use of salt as an article 
of food, and may be avoided by ceasing to employ that 
poisonous and immoral ingredient. Perhaps there is a 
still more unlucky association with life pills, universal 
vegetable medicines, and the other appliances of that 
coarser quackery which yearly brings hundreds of gulli- 

* A Month at> Malvern, under the Water Cure. By R. J. Lane, A.E.R.A. 
Third Edition. Reconsidered — Rewritten. London: 1855. 

Spirits and Water. By R. J. L. London: 1855. 

Confessions of a Water- Patient. By Sir E. B. Lytton, Bart. 

Hints to the Sick, the Lame, and the Lazy : or, Passages in the Life of a 
Eydropathist. By a Veteran. London : 1 848. 



Life at the Water Cure. 345 

ble Britons to their graves, and contributes thousands 
of pounds in the form of stamp-duty to the revenue of 
this great and enlightened country. 

It is a curious phase of life that is presented at a 
Water Cure establishment. The Water Cure system 
cannot be carried out satisfactorily except at an estab- 
lishment prepared for the purpose. An expensive 
array of baths is necessary ; so are well-trained bath 
servants, and an experienced medical man to watch the 
process of cure : the mode of life does not suit the 
arrangements of a family, and the listlessness of mind 
attendant on the water-system quite unfits a man for 
any active employment. There must be pure country 
air to breathe, a plentiful supply of the best water, 
abundant means of taking exercise — Sir E. B. Lytton 
goes the length of maintaining that mountains to climb 
are indispensable ; — and to enjoy all these advantages 
one must go to a hydropathic establishment. It may 
be supposed that many odd people are to be met at 
such a place ; strong-minded women who have broken 
through the trammels of the Faculty, and gone to the 
Water Cure in spite of the warnings of their medical 
men, and their friends' kind predictions that they would 
never live to come back ; and hypochondriac men, who 
have tried all quack remedies in vain, and who have 
come despairingly to try one which, before trying it, 
they probably looked to as the most violent and perilous 
of all. And the change of life is total. You may have 
finished your bottle of port daily for twenty years, but 
at the Water Cure you must perforce practise total 
abstinence. For years you may never have tasted fair 



346 Life at the Water Cure, 

water, but here you will get nothing else to drink, and 
you will have to dispose of your seven or eight tumblers 
a day. You may have been accustomed to loll in bed 
of a morning till nine or ten o'clock ; but here you 
must imitate those who would thrive, and ' rise at five :' 
while the exertion is compensated by your having to 
bundle ofF to your chamber at 9.30 p.m. You may 
long at breakfast for your hot tea, and if a Scotchman, 
for your grouse pie or devilled kidneys ; but you will 
be obliged to make up with the simpler refreshment of 
bread and milk, with the accompaniment of stewed 
Normandy pippins. You may have been wont to 
spend your days in a fever of business, in a breathless 
hurry and worry of engagements to be met and matters 
to be seen to ; but after a week under the Water Cure, 
you will find yourself stretched listlessly upon grassy 
banks in the summer noon, or sauntering all day beneath 
the horse-chesnuts of Sudbrook, with a mind as free 
from business cares as if you were numbered among 
Tennyson's lotos-eaters, or the denizens of Thomson's 
Castle of Indolence, And with God's blessing upon the 
pure element He has given us in such abundance, you 
will shortly [test'ibus Mr. Lane and Sir E. B. Lytton) 
experience other changes as complete, and more agree- 
able. You will find that the appetite which no dainty 
could tempt, now discovers in the simplest fare a relish 
unknown since childhood. You will find the broken 
rest and the troubled dreams which for years have made 
the midnight watches terrible, exchanged for the long 
refreshful sleep that makes one mouthful of the night. 
You will find the gloom and depression and anxiety 



Life at the Water Cure, 347 

which were growing your habitual temper, succeeded 
by a lightness of heart and buoyancy of spirit which you 
cannot account for, but which you thankfully enjoy. 
We doubt not that some of our readers, filled with 
terrible ideas as to the violent and perilous nature of 
the Water Cure, will give us credit for some strength 
of mind when we tell them that we have proved for 
ourselves the entire mode of life j we can assure them 
that there is nothing so very dreadful aboutit; and we trust 
they may not smile at us as harmlessly monomaniacal 
when we say that, without going the lengths its out-and- 
out advocates do, we believe that in certain states of health 
much benefit may really be derived from the system. 

Sir E. B. Lytton's eloquent Confessions of a Water- 
Patient have been before the public for some years. 
The Hints to the Sick, the Lame, and the Lazy, give us 
an account of the ailments and recovery of an old 
military officer, who, after suffering severely from gout, 
was quite set up by a few weeks at a hydropathic 
establishment at Marienberg on the Rhine ; and who, 
by occasional recurrence to the same remedy, is kept 
in such a state of preservation that, though advanced in 
years, he c is able to go eight miles within two hours, and 
can go up hill with most young fellows.' The old 
gentleman's book, with its odd woodcuts, and a certain 
freshness and incorrectness of style — we speak gram- 
matically-— in keeping with the character of an old 
soldier, is readable enough. Mr. Lane's books are far 
from being well written ; the Spirits and Water, espe- 
cially, is extremely poor stuff". The Month at Malvern 
is disfigured by similar faults of style ; but Mr. Lane 



348 Life at the Water Cure, 

has really something to tell us in that work : and there 
is a good deal of interest at once in knowing how a man 
who had been reduced to the last degree of debility of 
body and mind, was so effectually restored, that now 
for years he has, on occasion, proved himself equal to 
a forty-miles walk among the Welsh mountains on a 
warm summer day ; and also in remarking the boyish 
exhilaration of spirits in which Mr. Lane writes, which 
he tells us is quite a characteristic result of c initiation 
into the excitements of the Water Cure.' 

Mr. Lane seems to have been in a very bad way. 
He gives an appalling account of the medical treatment 
under which he had suffered for nearly thirty years. In 
spite of it all he found, at the age of forty-five, that his 
entire system was showing signs of breaking up. He 
was suffering from neuralgia^ which we believe means 
something like tic douloureux extending over the whole 
body ; he was threatened with paralysis, which had 
advanced so far as to have benumbed his right side ; 
his memory was going ; his mind was weakened ; he 
was, in his own words, ' no use to anybody :' there 
were deep cracks round the edge of his tongue ; his 
throat was ulcerated ; in short, he was in a shocking 
state, and never likely to be better. Like many people 
in such sad circumstances, he had tried all other 
remedies before thinking of the Water Cure ; he had 
resorted to galvanism, and so forth, but always got 
worse. At length, on the 13th of May 1845, Mr. 
Lane betook himself to Malvern, where Dr. Wilson 
presides over one of the largest cold-water establish- 
ments in the kingdom. In those days there were some 



Life at the Water Cure. 349 

seventy patients in residence, but the newcomer was 
pleased to find that there was nothing repulsive in the 
appearance of any of his companions, — a consideration 
of material importance, inasmuch as the patients break- 
fast, dine, and sup together. Nothing could have a 
more depressing effect upon any invalid, than to be 
constantly surrounded by a crowd of people manifestly 
dying, or afflicted with visible and disagreeable disease. 
The fact is, judging from our own experience, that the 
people who go to the Water Cure are for the most part 
not suffering from real and tangible ailments, but from 
maladies of a comparatively fanciful kind, — such as low 
spirits, shattered nerves, and lassitude, the result of 
over-work. And our readers may be disposed to think, 
with ourselves, that the change of air and scene, the 
return to a simple and natural mode of life, and the 
breaking off from the cares and engagements of business, 
have quite as much to do with their restoration as the 
water-system, properly so called. 

The situation of Malvern is well adapted to the suc- 
cessful use of the water system. Sir E. B. Lytton tells 
us that ' the air of Malvern is in itself hygeian : the 
water is immemorially celebrated for its purity : the 
landscape is a perpetual pleasure to the eye.' The 
neighbouring hills offer the exercise most suited to the 
cure : Priessnitz said, c One must have mountains :' 
and Dr. Wilson told Mr. Lane, in answer to a remark 
that the Water Cure had failed at Bath and Chelten- 
ham, that c no good and difficult cures can be made in 
low or damp situations, by swampy grounds, or near 
the beds of rivers.' 



350 Life at the Water Cure. 

The morning after his arrival, Mr. Lane fairly- 
entered upon the Water System : and his diary for 
the following month shows us that his time was fully 
occupied by baths of one sort or another, and by the 
needful exercise before and after these. The patient 
is gradually brought under the full force of hydropathy : 
some of the severer appliances — such as the plunge- 
bath after packing, and the douche — not being em- 
ployed till he has been in some degree seasoned and 
strung up for them. A very short time sufficed to 
dissipate the notion that there is anything violent or 
alarming about the Water Cure ; and to convince the 
patient that every part of it is positively enjoyable. 
There was no shock to the system : there was nothing 
painful : no nauseous medicines to swallow ; no vile 
bleeding and blistering. Sitz-baths, foot-baths, plunge- 
baths, douches, and wet-sheet packing, speedily began 
to do their work upon Mr. Lane ; and what with 
bathing, walking, hill-climbing, eating and drinking, 
and making up fast friendships with some of his 
brethren of the Water Cure, he appears to have had 
a very pleasant time of it. He tells us that he found that — 

The palliative and soothing effects of the water treatment are 
established immediately ,• and the absence of all irritation begets 
a lull, as instantaneous in its effects upon the frame as that ex- 
perienced in shelter from the storm. 

A sense of present happiness, of joyous spirits, of confidence 
in my proceedings, possesses me on this, the third day of my 
stay. I do not say that it is reasonable to experience this sudden 
accession, or that everybody is expected to attribute it to the 
course of treatment so recently commenced. I only say, so it is $ 
and I look for a confirmation of this happy frame of mind, when 
supported by renewed strength of body. 



Life at the Water Cure. 351 

To the same effect Sir E. B. Lytton : — 

Cares and griefs are forgotten : the sense of the present 
absorbs the past and future : there is a certain freshness and 
youth which pervade the spirits, and live upon the enjoyment of 
the actual hour. 

And the author of the Hints to the Sick^ &c. 

Should my readers find me prosy, I hope that they will 
pardon an old fellow, who looks back to his Water Cure 
course as one of the most delightful portions of a tolerably pros- 
perous life. 

When shall we find the subjects of the established 
system of medical treatment growing eloquent on the 
sudden accession of spirits consequent on a blister 
applied to the chest ; the buoyancy of heart which 
attends the operation of six dozen leeches ; the youth- 
ful gaiety which results from the c exhibition ' of a 
dose of castor oil ? It is no small recommendation of 
the water system, that it makes people so jolly while 
under it. 

But it was not merely present cheerfulness that 
Mr. Lane experienced : day by day his ailments were 
melting away. When he reached Malvern he limped 
painfully, and found it impossible to straighten his right 
leg, from a strain in the knee. In a week he ' did 
not know that he had a knee.' We are not going to 
follow the detail of his symptoms : suffice it to say 
that the distressing circumstances already mentioned 
gradually disappeared ; every day he felt stronger and 
better ; the half-paralysed side got all right again j 
mind and body alike recovered their tone : the c month 
at Malvern ' was followed up by a course of hydro- 



352 Life at the Water Cure. 

pathic treatment at home, such as the exigencies of 
home-life will permit ; and the upshot of the whole 
was, that from being a wretched invalid, incapable of 
the least exertion, mental or physical, Mr. Lane was 
permanently brought to a state of health and strength, 
activity and cheerfulness. All this improvement he 
has not the least hesitation in ascribing to the virtue 
of the Water Cure ; and after eight or ten years' 
experience of the system and its results, his faith in it 
is stronger than ever. 

In quitting Malvern, the following is his review of 
the sensations of the past month : — 

I look back with astonishment at the temper of mind which 
has prevailed over the great anxieties that, heavier than my ill- 
ness, had been bearing their weight upon me. Weakness of 
body had been chiefly oppressive, because by it I was deprived of 
the power of alleviating those anxieties ; and now, with all that 
accumulation of mental pressure, with my burden in full cry, 
and even gaining upon me during the space thus occupied, I 
have to reflect upon time passed in merriment, and attended by 
never-failing joyous spirits. 

To the distress of mind occasioned by gathering ailments, was 
added the pain of banishment from home ; and yet I have been 
translated to a life of careless ease. Any one whose knowledge 
of the solid weight that I carried to this place would qualify him 
to estimate the state of mind in which I left my home, might 
well be at a loss to appreciate the influences which had suddenly 
soothed and exhilarated my whole nature, until alacrity of mind 
and healthful gaiety became expansive, and the buoyant spirit on 
the surface was stretched to unbecoming mirth and lightness of 
heart. 

So much for Mr. Lane's experience of the Water 
Cure. As to its power in acute disease, we shall 
speak of that hereafter; but its great recommendations 



Life at the Water Cure. 353 

in all cases where the system has been broken down 
by over-work, are (if we are to credit its advocates) 
two : first, it braces up body and mind, and restores 
their healthy tone, in a way that nothing else can ; and 
next, the entire operation by which all this is accom- 
plished, is a course of physical and mental enjoyment. 

But by this time we can imagine our readers asking 
with some impatience, what is the Water Cure ? 
What is the precise nature of ail those oddly-named 
appliances by which it produces its results ? Now this 
is just what we are going to explain ; but we have 
sought to set out the benefits ascribed to the system 
before doing so, in the hope that that portion of tlie 
human race which shall read these pages, may feel the 
greater interest in the details which follow, when each 
of the individuals who compose it remembers, that 
these sitzes and douches are not merely the things 
which set up Sir E. B. Lytton, Mr. Lane, and our old 
military friend, but are the things which may some day 
be called on to revive his own sinking strength and his 
own drooping spirits. And as the treatment to which 
all water patients are subjected appears to be much 
the same, we shall best explain the nature of the various 
baths by describing them as we ourselves found them. 

Our story is a very simple one. Some years since, 
after a long stretch of excessive College work, we 
found our strength completely break down. We were 
languid and dispirited ; everything was an effort : we 
felt that whether study in our case had ' made the 
mind ' or not, it had certainly accomplished the other 
result which Festus ascribes to it, and c unmade the 

A A 



354 Life at the Water Cure, 

body.' We tried sea-bathing, cod-liver oil, and every- 
thing else that medical men prescribe to people done 
up by over study ; but nothing did much good. 
Finally, we determined to throw physic to the dogs, 
and to try a couple of months at the Water Cure. It 
does cost an effort to make up one's mind to go there, 
not only because the inexperienced in the matter fancy 
the water system a very perilous one, but also because 
one's steady-going friends, on hearing of our purpose, 
are apt to shake their heads, — perhaps even to tap 
their foreheads,— to speak doubtfully of our common 
sense, and express a kind hope — behind our backs, 
especially — that we are not growing fanciful and 
hvpochondriac, and that we may not end in writing 
testimonials in favour of Professor Holloway. We 
have already said that to have the full benefit of the 
Water Cure, one must go to a hydropathic establish- 
ment. There are numbers of these in Germany, and 
all along the Rhine ; and there are several in England, 
which are conducted in a way more accordant with 
our English ideas. At Malvern we believe there are 
two ; there is a large one at Ben Rhydding, in York- 
shire j one at Sudbrook Park, between Richmond and 
Ham ; and another at Moor Park, near Farnham. Its 
vicinity to London led us to prefer the one at Sud- 
brook ; and on a beautiful evening in the middle of 
May we found our way down through that garden-like 
country, so green and rich to our eyes, long accus- 
tomed to the colder landscapes of the north. Sudbrook 
Park is a noble place. The grounds stretch for a mile 
or more along Richmond Park, from which they are 



Life at the Water Cure. 355 

separated only by a wire fence ; the trees are mag- 
nificent, the growth of centuries, and among them are 
enormous hickories, acacias, and tulip-trees ; while 
horse-chesnuts without number make a very blaze of 
floral illumination through the leafy month of June. 
Richmond-hill, with its unrivalled views, rises from 
Sudbrook Park ; and that ^nV-looking Ham House, 
the verv ideal of the old English manor-house, with its 
noble avenues, which make twilight walks all the 
summer day, is within a quarter of a mile. As for 
the house itself, it is situated at the foot of the slope on 
whose summit Pembroke Lodge stands ; it is of great 
extent, and can accommodate a host of patients, though 
when we were there, the number of inmates was less 
than twenty. It is very imposing externally ; but the 
only striking feature of its interior is the dining-room, a 
noble hall of forty feet in length, breadth, and height. 
It is wainscoted with black oak, which some vile 
wretch of a water doctor painted white^ on the ground 
that it darkened the room. As for the remainder of 
the house, it is divided into commonplace bedrooms 
and sitting-rooms, and provided with bathing appliances 
of every conceivable kind. On arriving at a water 
establishment, the patient is carefully examined, chiefly 
to discover if anything be wrong about the heart, as 
certain baths would have a most injurious effect should 
that be so. The doctor gives his directions to the 
bath attendant as to the treatment to be followed, 
which, however, is much the same with almost all 
patients. The new comer finds a long table in the 
dining-hall, covered with bread and milk, between six 



356 Life at the Water Cure. 

and seven in the evening ; and here he makes his evening 
meal with some wry faces. At half-past nine p.m. he 
is conducted to his chamber, a bare little apartment, 
very plainly furnished. The bed is a narrow little 
thing, with no curtains of any kind. One sleeps on a 
mattress, which feels pretty hard at first. The jolly 
and contented looks of the patients had tended some- 
what to reassure us j still, we had a nervous feeling 
that we were fairly in for it, and could not divest 
ourselves of some alarm as to the ordeal before us \ so 
we heard the nightingale sing for many hours before 
we closed our eyes on that first night at Sudbrook 
Park. 

It did not seem a minute since we had fallen asleep, 
when we were awakened by some one entering our 
room, and by a voice which said, ' I hef come tu 
pack yew.' It was the bath-man, William, to whose 
charge we had been given, and whom we soon came 
to like exceedingly ; a most good-tempered, active, and 
attentive little German. We were very sleepy, and 
enquired as to the hour ; it was five a.m. There was 
no help for it, so we scrambled out of bed and sat on a 
chair, wrapped in the bed-clothes, watching William 
with sleepy eyes. He spread upon our little bed a 
very thick and coarse double blanket ; he then pro- 
duced from a tub what looked like a thick twisted 
cable, which he proceeded to unrol. It was a sheet 
of coarse linen, wrung out of the coldest water. And 
so here was the terrible wet sheet of which we had 
heard so much. We shuddered with terror. William 
saw our trepidation, and said> benevolently,, c Yew vill 



Life at the Water Cure. 357 

soon like him mosh.' He spread out the wet sheet 
upon the thick blanket, and told us to strip and lie 
down upon it. Oh ! it was as cold as ice ! William 
speedily wrapped it around us. Awfully comfortless 
was the first sensation. We tried to touch the cold 
damp thing at as few points as possible. It would not 
do. William relentlessly drew the blanket tight round 
us ; every inch of our superficies felt the chill of the 
sheet. Then he placed above us a feather bed, cut 
out to fit about the head, and stretched no end of 
blankets over all. c How long are we to be here V was 
our enquiry. c Fifty minutes,' said William, and dis- 
appeared. So there we were, packed in the wet sheet, 
stretched on our back, our hands pinioned by our sides, 
as incapable of moving as an Egyptian mummy in its 
swathes. ' What on earth shall we do,' we remember 
thinking, ' if a fire breaks out ?' Had a robber entered 
and walked off with our watch and money, we must 
have lain and looked at him, for we could not move a 
finger. By the time we had thought all this, the chilly, 
comfortless feeling was gone ; in ten minutes or less, a 
sensation of delicious languor stole over us : in a little 
longer we were fast asleep. We have had many a 
pack since, and we may say that the feeling is most 
agreeable when one keeps awake ; body and mind are 
soothed into an indescribable tranquillity ; the sensation 
is one of calm, solid enjoyment. In fifty minutes 
William returned. He removed the blankets and bed 
which covered us, but left us enveloped in the sheet 
and coarse blanket. By this time the patient is gene- 
rally in a profuse perspiration. William turned us 



3 58 Life at the Water Cure. 

round, and made us slip out of bed upon our feet ; then 
slightly loosing the lower part of our cerements, so that 
we could walk with difficulty, he took us by the 
shoulders and guided our unsteady steps out of our 
chamber, along a little passage, into an apartment con- 
taining a plunge bath. The bath was about twelve 
feet square ; its floor and sides covered with white 
encaustic tiles ; the water, clear as crystal against 
that light background, was five feet deep. In a trice 
we were denuded of our remaining apparel, and desired 
to plunge into the bath, head first. The whole thing 
was done in less time. than it has taken to describe it : 
no caloric had escaped : we were steaming like a coach 
horse that has done its ten miles within the hour on a 
summer day ; and it certainly struck us that the Water 
Cure had some rather violent measures in its repertory. 
We went a step or two down the ladder, and then 
plunged in overhead. c One plunge more and out,' 
exclaimed the faithful William ; and we obeyed. We 
were so thoroughly heated beforehand, that we never 
felt the bath to be cold. On coming out, a coarse 
linen sheet was thrown over us, large enough to have 
covered half-a-dozen men, and the bath-man rubbed us, 
ourselves aiding in the operation, till we were all in a 
glow of warmth. We then dressed as fast as possible, 
postponing for the present the operation of shaving, 
drank two tumblers of cold water, and took a rapid 
walk round the wilderness (an expanse of shrubbery 
near the house is so called), in the crisp, fresh morning 
air. The sunshine was of the brightest ; the dew was 
on the grass ; everybody was early there ; fresh-looking 



Life at the Water Cure, 359 

patients were walking in all directions at the rate of five 
miles an hour ; the gardeners were astir ; we heard the 
cheerful sound of the mower whetting his scythe ; the 
air was filled with the freshness of the newly-cut grass,, 
and with the fragrance of lilac and hawthorn blossom ; 
and all this by half-past six a.m. ! How we pitied the 
dullards that were lagging a-bed on that bright summer 
morning ! One turn round the wilderness occupied 
ten minutes : we then drank two more tumblers of 
water, and took a second turn of ten minutes. Two 
tumblers more, and another turn ; and then, in a glow 
of health and good humour, into our chamber to dress 
for the day. The main supply of water is drunk before 
breakfast ; we took six tumblers daily at that time, and 
did not take more than two or three additional in the 
remainder of the day. By eight o'clock breakfast was 
on the table in the large hall, where it remained till 
half-past nine. Bread, milk, water, and stewed pippins 
(cold), formed the morning meal. And didn't we polish 
it off ! The accession of appetite is immediate. 

Such is the process entitled the Pack and Plunge. It 
was the beginning of the day's proceedings during the 
two months we spent at Sudbrook. We believe it 
forms the morning treatment of almost every patient ; 
a shallow bath after packing being substituted for the 
plunge in the case of the more nervous. With what- 
ever apprehension people may have locked forward to 
being packed before having experienced the process, 
they generally take to it kindly after a single trial. The 
pack is perhaps the most popular part of the entire cold 
water treatment. 



360 Life at the Water Cure. 

Mr. Lane says of it : — 

What occurred during a full hour after this operation (being 
packed) I am not in a condition to depose, beyond the fact that 
^ the sound, sweet, soothing sleep which I enjoyed, was a matter 
oi surprise and delight. I was detected by Mr. Bardon, who 
came to awake me, smiling, like a great fool, at nothing $ if not 
at the fancies which had played about my slumbers. Of the 
heat in which I found myself, I must remark, that it is as distinct 
from perspiration, as from the parched and throbbing glow of 
fever. The pores are open, and the warmth of the body is soon 
communicated to the sheet ; until — as in this my first experience 
of the luxury — a breathing, steaming heat is engendered, which 
fills the whole of the wrappers, and is plentifully shown in the 
smoking state which they exhibit as they are removed. I shall 
never forget the luxurious ease in which I awoke on this morning, 
and looked forward with pleasure to the daily repetition of what 
had been quoted to me by the uninitiated with disgust and 
shuddering. 

Sir E. B. Lytton says of the pack: — 

Of all the curatives adopted by hydropathists, it is unques- 
tionably the safest — the one that can be applied without danger 
to the greatest variety of cases ; and which, I do not hesitate to 
aver, can rarely, if ever, be misapplied in any case where the 
pulse is hard and high, and the skin dry and burning. Its theory 
is that of warmth and moisture, those friendliest agents to inflam- 
matory disorders. 

I have been told, or have read (says Mr. Lane), put a man 
into the wet sheet who had contemplated suicide, and it would 
turn him from his purpose. At least I will say, let me get hold 
of a man who has a pet enmity, who cherishes a vindictive feel- 
ing, and let me introduce him to the soothing process. I believe 
that his bad passion would not linger in its old quarters three 
days, and that after a week his leading desire would be to hold 
out the hand to his late enemy. 

Of the sensation in the pack, Sir E. B. Lytton tells 
us: — 



Life at the Water Cure, 361 

The momentary chill is promptly succeeded by a gradual and 
vivifying warmth, perfectly free from the irritation of dry 
heat ; a delicious sense of ease is usually followed by a sleep 
more agreeable than anodynes ever produced. It seems a posi- 
tive cruelty to be relieved from this magic girdle, in which 
pain is lulled, and fever cooled, and watchfulness lapped in 
slumber. 

The hydropathic breakfast at Sudbrook being over, 
at nine o'clock we had a foot-bath. This is a very- 
simple matter. The feet are placed in a tub of cold 
water, and rubbed for four or five minutes by the bath- 
man. The philosophy of this bath is thus explained : — 

The soles of the feet and the palms of the hands are extremely 
sensitive, having abundance of nerves, as we find if we tickle 
them. Ff the feet are put often into hot water, they will become 
habitually cold, and make one more or less delicate and nervous. 
On the other hand, by rubbing the feet often in cold water, they 
will become permanently warm. A cold foot-bath will stop a vio- 
lent fit of hysterics. Cold feet show a defective circulation. 

At half-past ten in the forenoon we were subjected 
to by far the most trying agent in the water system — 
the often-mentioned douche. No patient is allowed to 
have the douche till he has been acclimated by at least 
a fortnight's treatment. Our readers will understand 
that from this hour onward we are describing not our 
first Sudbrook day, but a representative day^ such as our 
days were when we had got into the full play of the 
system. The douche consists of a stream of water, as 
thick as one's arm, falling from a height of twenty-four 
feet. A pipe, narrowing'to the end, conducts the stream 
for the first six feet of its fall, and gives it a somewhat 
slanting direction. The water falls, we need hardly 



362, Life at the Water Cure. 

say, with a tremendous rush, and is beaten to foam on 
the open wooden floor. There were two douches at 
Sudbrook : one, of a somewhat milder nature, being 
intended for the lady patients. Every one is a little 
nervous at first taking this bath. One cannot be too 
warm before having it \ we always took a rapid walk of 
half an hour, and came up to the ordeal glowing like a 
furnace. The faithful William was waiting our arrival, 
and ushered us into a little dressing-room, where we 
disrobed. William then pulled a cord, which let loose 
the formidable torrent, and we hastened to place our- 
selves under it. The course is to back gradually till it 
falls upon the shoulders, then to sway about till every 
part of the back and limbs has been played upon : but 
great care must be taken not to let the stream fall upon 
the head, where its force would probably be dangerous. 
The patient takes this bath at first for one minute ; the 
time is lengthened daily till it reaches four minutes, and 
there it stops. The sensation is that of a violent con- 
tinuous force assailing one ; we are persuaded that were 
a man blindfolded, and so deaf as not to hear the splash 
of the falling stream, he could not for his life tell what 
was the cause of the terrible shock he was enduring. 
It is not in the least like the result of water : indeed it 
is unlike any sensation we ever experienced elsewhere. 
At the end of our four minutes the current ceases ; we 
enter the dressing-room, and are rubbed as after the 
plunge-bath. The reaction is instantaneous : the blood 
is at once called to the surface. ' Red as a rose were 
we :' we were more than warm ; we were absolutely 
hot. 



Life at the Water Cure. 363 

Although most patients come to like the douche, it 
is always to be taken with caution. That it is dangerous 
in certain conditions of the body, there is no doubt. 
Sir E. B. Lytton speaks strongly on this point : — 

Never let the eulogies which many will pass upon the douche 
tempt you to take it on the sly, unknown to your adviser. The 
douche is dangerous when the body is unprepared — when the 
heart is affected — when apoplexy may be feared. 

After having douched, which process was over by 
eleven, we had till one o'clock without further treatment. 
We soon came to feel that indisposition to active em- 
ployment which is characteristic of the system ; and 
these two hours were given to sauntering, generally 
alone, in the green avenues and country lanes about 
Ham and Twickenham ; but as we have already said 
something of the charming and thoroughly English 
scenes which surround Sudbrook, we shall add nothing 
further upon that subject now — though the blossoming 
horse-chestnuts and the sombre cedars of Richmond 
Park, the bright stretches of the Thames, and the 
quaint gateways and terraces of Ham House, the startled 
deer and the gorse-covered common, all picture them- 
selves before our mind at the mention of those walks, 
and tempt us sorely. 

At one o'clock we returned to our chamber, and had 
a head-bath. We lay upon the ground for six minutes, 
if we remember rightly, with the back of our head in 
a shallow vessel of water. 

Half-past one was the dinner hour. All the patients 
were punctually present ; those who had been longest 
in the house occupying the seats next those of Dr. and 



364 Life at the Water Cure. 

Mrs. Ellis, who presided at either end of the table. 
The dinners were plain, but abundant ; and the guests 
brought with them noble appetites, so that it was agreed 
on all hands that there never was such beef or mutton 
as that of Sudbrook. Soup was seldom permitted : 
plain joints were the order of the day, and the abundant 
use of fresh vegetables was encouraged. Plain puddings, 
such as rice and sago, followed ; there was plenty of 
water to drink. A number of men-servants waited, 
among whom we recognised our friend William, dis- 
guised in a white stock. The entertainment did not 
last long. In half-an-hour the ladies withdrew to their 
drawing-room, and the gentlemen dispersed themselves 
about the place once more. 

Dinner being dispatched, there came the same listless 
sauntering about till four o'clock, when the pack and 
plunge of the morning were repeated. At half-past 
six we had another head-bath. Immediately after it 
there was supper, which was a facsimile of breakfast. 
Then, more sauntering in the fading twilight, and at 
half-past nine we paced the long corridor leading to our 
chamber, and speedily were sound asleep. No mid- 
night tossings, no troubled dreams ; one long deep 
slumber till William appeared next morning at five, to 
begin the round again. 

Such was our life at the Water Cure : a contrast as 
complete as might be to the life which preceded and 
followed it. Speaking for ourselves, we should say that 
there is a great deal of exaggeration in the accounts we 
have sometimes read of the restorative influence of the 
system. It wrought no miracle in our case. A couple 



Life at the Water Cure. 365 

of months at the sea-side would probably have produced 
much the same effect. We did not experience that 
extreme exhilaration of spirits which Mr. Lane speaks 
of. Perhaps the soft summer climate of Surrey, in a 
district rather over-wooded, wanted something of the 
bracing quality which dwells in the keener air of the 
Malvern hills. Yet the system strung us up wonder- 
fully, and sent us home with much improved strength 
and heart. And since that time, few mornings have 
dawned on which we have not tumbled into the cold 
bath on first rising, and, following the process by a 
vigorous rubbing with towels of extreme roughness, 
experienced the bracing influence of cold water alike 
on the body and the mind. 

We must give same account of certain other baths, 
which have not come within our course latterly, though 
we have at different times tried them all. We have 
mentioned the sitz-bath ; here is its nature : — 

It is not disagreeable, but very odd : and exhibits the patient 
in by no means an elegant or dignified attitude. For this bath 
it is not necessary to undress, the coat only being taken off, and 
the shirt gathered under the waistcoat, which is buttoned upon it 5 
and when seated in the water, which rises to the waist, a blanket 
is drawn round and over the shoulders. Having remained ten 
minutes in this condition, we dried and rubbed ourselves with 
coarse towels, and after ten minutes' walk, proceeded to supper 
with a good appetite. 

The soothing and tranquillising effect of the sitz is 
described as extraordinary : — 

In sultry weather, when indolence seems the only resource, 
a sitz of ten minutes at noon will suffice to protect against 
the enervating effect of heat, and to rouse from listlessness and 
inactivity. 



366 Life at the Water Cure. 

If two or three hours have been occupied by anxious conver- 
sation, by many visitors, or by any of the perplexities of daily 
occurrence, a sitz will effectually relieve the throbbing head, 
and fit one for a return (if it must be so) to the turmoil and 
bustle. 

If an anxious letter is to be mentally weighed, or an important 
letter to be answered, the matter and the manner can be under 
no circumstances so adequately pondered as in the sitz. How this 
quickening of the faculties is engendered, and by what imme- 
diate action it is produced, I cannot explain, and invite others to 
test it by practice. 

I have in my own experience proved the sitz to be cogittatory, 
consolatory, quiescent, refrigeratory, revivificatory, or all these 
together. 

One of the least agreeable processes in the water 
system is being sweated. Mr. Lane describes his sen- 
sations as follows : — 

At five o'clock in walked the executioner who was to initiate 
me into the sweating process. There was nothing awful in the 
commencement. Two dry blankets were spread upon the mat- 
tress, and I was enveloped in them as in the wet sheet, being well 
and closely tucked in round the neck, and the head raised on two 
pillows. Then came my old friend the down bed, and a coun- 
terpane. 

At first I felt very comfortable, but in ten minutes the irrita- 
tion of the blanket was disagreeable, and endurance was my only 
resource ; thought upon other subjects out of the question. In 
half-an-hour I wondered when it would begin to act. At six, 
in came Bardon to give me water to drink. Another hour, 
and I was getting into a state. I had for ten minutes followed 
Bardon's directions, by slightly moving my hands and legs, and 
the profuse perspiration was a relief ; besides, I knew that I should 
be soon fit to be bathed, and what a tenfold treat ! He gave me 
more water ,• and in a quarter of an hour he returned, when I 
stepped, in a precious condition, into the cold bath, Bardon 
using more water on my head and shoulders than usual, more 



Life at the Water Cure. g6j 

rubbing and spunging, and afterwards more vigorous dry rub- 
bing. I was more than pink, and hastened to get out and com- 
pare notes with Sterling. 

By the sweating process, the twenty-eight miles of 
tubing which exist in the pores of the skin are effectu- 
ally relieved; and — in Dr. Wilson's words — 'you lose 
a little water ^ and put yourself in a state to makeyMz.' 
The sweating process is known at water establishments 
as the c blanket pack.' 

We believe we have mentioned every hydropathic 
appliance that is in common use, with the exception of 
what is called the c rub in a wet sheet.' This consists 
in having a sheet, dripping wet, thrown round one, 
and in being vehemently rubbed by the bath-man, the 
patient assisting. The effect is very bracing and ex- 
hilarating on a sultry summer day ; and this treatment 
has the recommendation that it is applied and done with 
in the course of a few minutes ; nor does it need any 
preliminary process. It is just the thing to get the 
bath-man to administer to a friend who has come down 
to visit one, as a slight taste of the quality of the Water 
Cure. 

One pleasing result of the treatment is, that the skin 
is made beautifully soft and white. Another less 
pleasing circumstance is, that when there is any im- 
purity lurking in the constitution, a fortnight's treat- 
ment brings on what is called a crisis, in which the evil 
is driven off in the form of an eruption all over the 
body. This result never follows unless where the 
patient has been in a most unhealthy state. People 
who merely need a little bracing up need not have the 



368 Life at the Water Cure, 

least fear of it. Our own two months of water never 
produced the faintest appearance of such a thing. 

Let us sum up the characteristics of the entire 
system in the words of Sir E. B. Lytton : — 

The first point which impressed me was the extreme and utter 
innocence of the water-cure in skilful hands — in any hands, in- 
deed, not thoroughly new to the system. 

The next thing that struck me was the extraordinary ease with 
which, under this system, good habits are acquired and bad habits 
are relinquished. 

That which, thirdly, impressed me, was no less contrary to all 
my preconceived opinions. I had fancied that, whether good or 
bad, the system must be one of great hardship, extremely repug- 
nant and disagreeable. I wondered at myself to find how soon 
it became so associated with pleasurable and grateful feelings 
as to dwell upon the mind as one of the happiest passages of 
existence. 

We have left ourselves no space to say anything of 
the effect of the Water Cure in acute disease. It is said 
to work wonders in the case of gout, and all rheumatic 
complaints : the severe suffering occasioned by the 
former vexatious malady is immediately subdued, and 
the necessity of colchicum and other deleterious drugs 
is obviated. Fever and inflammation, too, are drawn 
off by constant packing, without being allowed to run 
their usual course. Our readers may find remarkable 
cures of heart and other diseases recorded at pages 24, 
72, 114, and 172 of the Month at Malvern. We 
quote the account of one case : — 

I was introduced to a lady, that I might receive her own re- 
port of her cure. She had been for nine years paralysed from the 
tvaist downwards $ pale and emaciated ; and coming to Malvern, 
she had no idea of recovering the use of her limbs, but merely 



Life at the Water Cure. 36 9 

bodily health. In five months she became ruddy, and then her 
perseverance in being packed twice every day was rewarded. 
The returning muscular power was advanced to perfect recovery 
of the free use of her limbs. She grew stout and strong, and now 
walks ten miles daily. 

We confess we should like to have this story con- 
firmed by some competent authority. It appears to 
verge on the impossible : unless,, indeed, the fact was 
that the lady was some nervous,, fanciful person, who 
took up a hypochondriac idea that she was paralysed, 
and got rid of the notion by having her constitution 
braced up. 

We trust we have succeeded in persuading those who 
have glanced over these pages,, that the Water Cure is 
by no means the violent thing which they have in all 
probability been accustomed to consider it. There is 
no need for being nervous about going to it.. There is 
nothing about it that is half such a shock to the systein 
as are blistering and mercury, purgatives and drastics, 
leeches and the lancet. Almost every appliance within 
its range is a source of positive enjoyment ; the time 
spent under it is a cheerful holiday to body and mind. 

We take it to be quackery and absurdity to maintain 
that all possible diseases can be cured by the cold water 
system ; but, from our own experience, we believe 
that the system and its concomitants do tend powerfully 
to brace and re-invigorate, when mental exertion has 
told upon the system, and even threatened to break it 
down. But really it is no new discovery that fresh air 
and water, simple food and abundant exercise, change 
of scene and intermission of toil and excitement, tend 

B B 



3/0 Life at the Water Cure, 

to brace the nerves and give fresh vigour to the limbs. 
In the only respect in which we have any confidence 
in the Water Cure, it is truly no new system at all. 
We did not need Priessnitz to tell us that the fair 
element which, in a hundred forms, makes so great a 
part of Creation's beauty — trembling, crystal-clear, 
upon the rosebud ; gleaming in the sunset river ; 
spreading, as we see it to-day, in the bright blue 
summer sea ; fleecy-white in the silent clouds, and gay 
in the evening rainbow, — is the true elixir of health 
and life, the most exhilarating draught, the most sooth- 
ing anodyne ; the secret of physical enjoyment, and 
mental buoyancy and vigour. 



LONDON 

PRINTED BY SPOTTISWOODE AND CO. 

NEW-STREET SOJJARE. 



Works by the same Author. 



SUNDAY AFTERNOONS AT THE PARISH 
CHURCH OF A UNIVERSITY CITY. 

By A. K. H. B. In One Volume, crown 8vo. 35. 6d. 

Concerning the Parish Church. 

The Perpetuation of Character in the Future Life. 

Realization. 

Restraining Prayer. 

True Worship. 

Christian Love. 

The Blessing Cursed. 

The Bible : I. 

The Bible : II. 

Partaking of other Men's Sins. 

The Cattle Plague. 

Experience. 

Truth in Love. 

Truths Overlooked because of their Obviousness. 

Despondency. 

The Family in Heaven and Earth. 

The Sight of the Saviour Sanctifying. 

THE RECREATIONS OF A COUNTRY PARSON. 

First Series. With 41 Illustrations engraved on Wood from Original 
Designs by R. T. Pritchett. Crown 8vo. 12s. 6d. 

Concerning the Country Parson's Life. 

Concerning the Art of Putting Things : being Thoughts on Repre- 
sentation and Misrepresentation. 

Concerning Two Blisters of Humanity : being Thoughts on Petty 
Malignity and Petty Trickery. 

Concerning Work and Play. 

Concerning Country Houses and Country Life. 

Concerning Tidiness : being Thoughts upon an Overlooked Source 
of Human Content. 

How I Mused in the Railway Train : being Thoughts on Rising 
by Candle-Light ; on Nervous Fears ; and on Vapouring. 

Concerning the Moral Influences of the Dwelling. 

Concerning Hurry and Leisure. 

Conclusion. 



Works by the same Author — continued. 



THE RECREATIONS OF A COUNTRY PARSON. 

Secojstd Series. Crown 8vo. price 3s. 6d. 

Concerning the Parson's Choice between Town and Country. 

Concerning Disappointment and Success. 

Concerning Giving Up and Coming Down. 

Concerning the Worries of Life and How to Meet Them. 

Concerning the Dignity of Dulness. 

Concerning Growing Old. 

Concerning Scylla and Charybdis : with some Thoughts upon the 

Swing of the Pendulum. 
Concerning Churchyards. 
Concerning Summer Days. 

LEISURE HOURS IN TOWN. 

Third Edition. Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d. 

Concerning the Parson's Leisure Hours in Town. 

Concerning Screws : being Thoughts on the Practical Service of 

Imperfect Means. 
Concerning Solitary Days. 
Concerning Future Years. 
Concerning Things Slowly Learnt. 
Gone. 

Concerning Veal : a Discourse of Immaturity. 
Concerning People of whom More might have been Made. 
Concerning People who Carried Weight in Life: with some 

Thoughts on Those who Never had a Chance. 
College Lii'e at Glasgow. 

THE COMMONPLACE PHILOSOPHER IN 
TOWN AND COUNTRY. 

Second Edition. Crown 8vo. price 3s. 6d. 

To Work Again. 

Concerning the World's Opinion : with some Thoughts on Cowed 

People. 
Concerning the Sorrows of Childhood. 

Concerning Atmospheres, with some Thoughts on Currents. 
Concerning Beginnings and Ends. 
Going On. 

Concerning Disagreeable People. 
Outside. 
Getting On. 

Concerning Man and His Dwelling-place. 
Concerning a Great Scotch Preacher. 
At the Land's End. 



Works by the same Author — continued. 



THE AUTUMN HOLIDAYS OF A COUNTRY 
PARSON: 

Essays Consolatory, iEsthetical, Moral, Social, and Domestic. 
Second Edition. Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d. cloth. 

By the Seaside. 
Concerning Unpruned Trees. 

Concerning Ugly Ducks : being some Thoughts on Misplaced Men. 
Of the Sudden Sweetening of Certain Grapes. 
Concerning the Estimate of Human Beings. 
Eemembrance. 

On the Eorest Hill ; with some Thoughts touching Dream-Life. 
Concerning Resignation. 

A Eeminiscence of the Old Time : being some Thoughts on Going Away. 
Concerning Old Enemies. 

At the Castle : with some Thoughts on Michael Scott's Familiar Spirit. 
Concerning the Eight Tack : with some Thoughts on the Wrong Tack. 
Concerning Needless Fears. 
Beaten. 
Gossip. 

Concerning Cutting and Carving : with some Thoughts on Tam- 
pering with the Coin of the Eealm. 
From Saturday to Monday. 
Concerning Things which cannot Go on. 

THE GRAVER THOUGHTS OF A COUNTRY 
PARSON. 

Second Series. New Edition. Crown 8vo. price 3s. 6d. 

Praying Everywhere. 

The Discipline of Sorrow. 

He must increase ; but I must decrease. 

Grieving the Holy Spirit. 

Intolerance. 

Needless Fears. 

No Temple m Heaven. 

All Saints. 

Work. 

Intercessory Prayer. 

Christian Consolation under Bereavement by Death. 

The First Prayer in Solomon's Temple. 

The Expectancy of Creation. 

Living to One's Self. . 

The Coming Night. 

Doctrine and Practice. 

Patience. 

St. Paul's Closing Eetrospect and Prospect. 

London: LONGMANS, GEEEN, and CO. Paternoster Row. 



NEW AND CHEAPER UNIFORM EDITION OF THE TALES AND 
STORIES BY THE AUTHOR OF AMY HERBERT. 



THE SET OF TEN VOLUMES, CBOWN OCTAVO, PHICE 44s. Qd. CLOTH, 

GILT EDGES, OB 345. 6d. CLOTH BOAEDS ; OR EACH OF THE TEN 

WOEKS COMPLETE IN ONE VOLUME, SEPAEATELY, AS BELOW. 



STORIES AND TALES 

BY THE 

AUTHOR OF AMY HERBERT. 



AMY HERBERT. 3s. 6d. cloth, 2s. 6d. bds. 
GERTRUDE, 3s. U. cloth, 2s. 6d. boards. 
EARL'S DAUGHTER, 3s. ed. cl. 2s. 6d. bds. 
EXPERIENCE of LIFE, 3s. 6(7. cl. 2 S . Cd. bds. 
CLEVE HALL, 4s. 6d. cloth, 3s.6c7. boards. 



IVORS, 4s. 6rf. cloth, 3s. 6d. boards. 
KATHARINE ASHTON, 4s. 6d. cl. 3s. 6d. bds. 
MARGARET PERCIVAL,6s. cloth, 5s. bds. 
LANETON PARSONAGE, 5s. 6d. cl. 4s. 6c7. 
URSULA, 5s. 6d. cloth. 4s. 6d. boards. 



SELECT CRITICAL OPINIONS 



' While older readers instinctively 
recur to the Experience of Life as foremost 
in excellence and wisdom among the 
writings of the present Author, her young 
admirers will as instinctively recal Lane- 
ton Parsonage as their prime favourite. 
Youthful readers can scarcely enter 
critically into the fineness of outline and 
. the delicacy of finish -which mark each cha- 
racter, the exquisite mosaic inlaying: the whole 
production [Laneton Parsonage], but they can 
unconsciously appreciate the result. They 
feel that the children who are made for the 
time their companions are realities in_ their 
goodness and their naughtiness ; and high as 
is the standard set before them, they are taught 
and made to feel that by following the path 
tracked out the high prize may be obtained. 
To the thoroughness and integrity, the abso- 
lute rectitude inculcated in thought, word, 
and deed, and to the tender charity extended 
to the erring and repentant, we are inclined 
to attribute the hold these works take on 
readers of all classes and all ages. The pure 
transparent sincerity tells even on those 
who are apt to find any work whose aim and 
object are religious, heavy and uninteresting. 
The republication of these works in an easily 
accessible form is a benefit of which we cannot 
over-estimate the solid advantages.' Globe. 



' If there is just cause for complaining 
that members of the Church of England 
too often confound the sign with the 
thing signified, and have a name that 
they live while they are spiritually dead, 
the reason for such a sad state of things 
cannot be found in any general ignorance 
of what true religion is. If descrip- 
tions of the divine life were confined to books 
of devotion, or locked up in abstruse theo- 
logical treatises, the case would be different; 
but the volumes now before us prove in 
what attractive forms genuine godliness is 
displayed. The accomplished and pious 
authoress of Amy Herbert has told many 
captivating tales, but there is not one of them 
which leaves the reader in doubt as to what 
real religion is, as taught in the Bible, and 
exhibited in the formularies of the Church. 
We embrace this opportunity of re- 
commending to the clergy these valuable 
tales. They can much serve the good cause 
by turning the taste of readers of fiction into 
the healthy channels here provided for it. 
Works like these, if judiciously circulated in 
parishes, cannot fail to strengthen that im- 
portant and desirable conviction, that man's 
chief end is to glorify God. that he may enjoy 
Him for ever.' Clerical Journal. 



London : LONGMANS, GREEN, and CO. Paternoster Row. 



ONE-VOLUME EDITIONS OF MR. J. G. WHYTE 
MELVILLE'S NOVELS. 

New Edition, price 5*. complete in One Volume, crown 8vo. with Frontispiece 
engraved on Steel by H. Adlard, copied by permission from Ger6me's 
Picture — 

Ave Caesar Imperator ! morituri te salutant ! 

THE GLADIATORS: 

By J. a. WHYTE MELVILLE. 



OPINIONS OF 

' The Author's greatest skill is shown 
in the selection of his characters. The 
school or Family of Gladiators is the 
centre round which the plot mainly re- 
volves ; and with them Mr. Melville 
is thoroughly at home. The distinctness 
with which he has set these people be- 
fore lis amounts to a positive service to 
classical literature. Their habits, tastes, 
and personal appearance, their peculiar 
position in society, the mingled respect 
and contempt excited by them, their 
ready instrumentality in any deed of 
political violence, are set forth with a 
clearness which invests with a living 
reality an important and peculiar class 
of persons who have hitherto been to 
most readers of Roman history little 
more than a name. The terrible sports 
of the amphitheatre are depicted with a 
vividness which owes some of its power 
to the personal interest we have been 

made to feel in the actors A book, 

prepared with so much care, dealing 
with such great events, and abounding 
in brilliant scenes and striking situa- 
tions, well deserves a careful perusal.' 
Guardian. 



THE PRESS. 

■ A strong interest is infused into the 
Gladiators by the glimpses it gives us 
of the infant Christian Church.. ..The 
result is a book which clothes the dry 
bones of history with forms of beauty 
and strength, and animates them witn 
the various movements and passions of 
humanity.' Daily News. 

' The novel is clever, it is even bril- 
liant, it is written with a warm and 
vigorous eloquence, and the reader is 
carried on from scene to scene, and 
crisis to crisis, amused, interested, ex- 
cited. If he takes up the book, he will 
read on to the end of the third volume 
and the destruction of the Temple.' 
The Times. 

'Mr. Whyte Melville's touch is 
vigorous and sharp, his power of excit- 
ing dramatic interest as conspicuous 
in the Gladiators as in his domestic 
novels, his power of bringing; before us 
in picturesque delineation the world of 
old Rome, with all it had of repulsion 
and attraction, not surpassed by either 
of the distinguished predecessors with 
whom we have compared him.' 

Fraser's Magazine. 



NEW AND CHEAPER ONE-VOLUME EDITIONS OF 
WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 

DIGBY GRAND, an Autobiography, 5<y. 

KATE COVENTRY, an Autobiography, 5*. 

GENERAL BOUNCE, or the Lady and the Locusts, 5s. 

The INTERPRETER, a Tale of the War, 5s. 

HOLMBY HOUSE, a Tale of Old Northamptonshire, 6*. 

GOOD for NOTHING, or All Down Hill, 6s. 

The QUEEN'S MARIES, a Romance of Holyrood, 6s. 



London: LONGMANS, GREEN, and CO. Paternoster Row. 



FEB'*V7 1904 

LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP WHATELY. 

Just published, in 2 vols. 8vo. with 2 Portraits, price 28s. 

LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE 

OF 

RICHAKD WHATELY, D.D. 

LATE ARCHBISHOP OF DUBLIN - . 
By E. JANE WHATELY, Author of < English Synonyms.' 

OPINIONS of the PRESS.. 



'Miss "Whately has executed a 
gallery picture of the largest dimen-. 
sions, in the centre of which stands 
the noble figure of her father, of 
heroic size.' Athen^um. 

'Miss Whately has, we think, 
shown remarkable courage in printing 
various sketches of her fathers cha- 
racter by different hands, which bring 
out its characteristics better than she 
could have ventured on when using 
her own pen.' 

Pall Mall Gazette. 

'Those who knew the late Arch- 
bishop of Dublin only by his pub- 
lished works will gain a very much 
hisher impression o f him in every way 
than they were likely in that manner 
to have formed, by this admirable 
selection from his correspondence and 
this simple narrative of his laborious 
life ' Spectator. 

' No Mem oir of Archbish op Wh atelt 
has vet been published so comnlete in 
every respect as that which is now 
produced by his daughter. She has 
proved her heritage of talent by the 
ability displayed in its compilation, 
and she deserves especial commenda- 
tion for the impartiality with which 
she writes. Her work is equally free 
from fulsome praise of her father and 
any severe or uncalled-for strictures 
on the conduct of his opponents. Her 



plan of allowing the subject of her 
memoir to speak for himself is effec- 
tually carried out wherever it was 
possible.' Morning- Post. 

* Miss Whateey's memoir of her 
father, the late Archbishop of Dublin, 
modestly introduced, is really all that 
one could wish. Dr. Whately speaks 
for himself through a well-arranged 
sequence of letters, with connecting 
facts simply narrated; and the vi- 
gorous honesty with which his healthy 
and kindly mind worked becomes un- 
mistakeable even by the worst bigots 
whom his liberality of thought of- 
fended.' Examiner. 

'As a contribution to the history 
of 'an eventful period indeed, these, 
volumes possess no small value. Foy 
this portrait of a man of great in- 
fluence, less perhaps even in a public 
than in a more private capacity, we 
are thankful to Miss Whately, and 
especially for this, that she has be- 
stowed so much care and shown so 
much discrimination in this her labour 
of love. She has, by writing these 
volumes, raised the fittest monument 
to her father, a man whose singleness 
of purpose was unrivalled, and whose 
life will long be remembered because 
of the lessons which it affords to all 
who are engaged in the service of 
Christ's church.' Churohmas". 



London : LONGMANS, G-KEEN, and CO. Paternoster Eow. 



NOV -1 



:3'i4 






Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: March 2009 

PreservationTechnologies 

A WORLD LEADER IN COLLECTIONS PRESERVATION 

111 Thomson Park Drive 
Cranberry Township, PA 16066 
(724)779-2111 



